


Blue Harvest

by Experimental



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Age of Sail, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Desert Island, F/M, Fae & Fairies, Forbidden Love, Lost Love, M/M, Quests, Slow Burn, Spelunking, Swords & Sorcery, Tentacles, The Russians Are Faeries
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-09-23 21:47:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 43,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17088338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Experimental/pseuds/Experimental
Summary: To stop the monster terrorizing Napul's waters and win the hearts of their respective lady loves, Michele (a knight) and Georgi (a fae) venture out in search of a faerie weapon lost for centuries, the dreaded Dark Heart of Carabosse.With a little help from Christophe (a pirate) and his crew, and a cast of everyone, their quest will take them into their pasts, to what unexplored truths lie buried in their own hearts. And to a desert island at the edge of the world, where a horror beyond their imaginations patiently awaits them (it's a thirsty giant squid).





	1. The Island

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the events of _Yuri!!! on Festival_.
> 
> My endless thanks to [Halrloprillalar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prillalar/pseuds/Halrloprillalar), for all the ~~enabling~~ encouragement and the ear you lent me. May the blessings of Squid-kun be ever upon you.
> 
> And for Popochan, on his birthday. <3

The cave opened out of the base of the cliff like the maw of some giant sea serpent of yore, hidden from view until their little boat had slipped between the worn rock sentinels and entered the cove. At this distance, Michele could make out hundreds of stalactites descending from the vault, sparkling in the early morning sun as if with the monster's unquenchable thirst. How many boats had ventured into that maw and never again seen the light of day? How many souls had gone willingly down that rocky gullet and been consumed?

“Into the mouth of Hell I shall cast my heart,” Georgi said in an awed whisper beside him, most likely quoting something. Though, knowing Georgi, Michele could never be sure.

He didn't like the foreboding in it. It sent a shiver down his spine. “Enough of that. Don't you worry about tempting fate with that morbid poetry?”

Georgi snorted, but held his tongue. No doubt dismissing Michele's concern as mere human superstition.

But there was good reason for superstition, Michele could tell him. Caution, and a healthy fear of God, never did anyone a lick of harm. But they did, more often than not, save lives.

“Still,” Michele could not help but observe, “it is strangely quiet. _Too_ quiet,” the violent pounding and crashing of the waves against the reef fading at their backs the closer they came to the cave mouth.

Neither would say it aloud, but both had expected this final leg of the journey to be the most difficult yet. There must have been some good reason that only one man who ventured into the cave in the better part of eight hundred years had returned to civilization to tell of its secrets. They would have to be on their guard. They had come too far to turn back now, and let all that they had sacrificed be in vain.

And Sara was depending on him to succeed.

Above all, that singular thought propelled Michele onward, when the weight of weariness or guilt or fear threatened to stop him and turn him around. His sword rested against his knee, ready for anything they should encounter, as Georgi rowed this turn. And as Michele idly stroked her hilt, encrusted with the jewel of their house, he felt his twin sister's love for him rekindle the hope in his heart, even across what vast distances separated them, and his courage was renewed within him.

He needed it, too. Every last ounce of it as their boat slipped silently inside that yawning maw.

* * *

The cave was even more immense than Michele imagined from the approach, arching over their heads like the vaulted ceiling of a cathedral.

And cold. No sooner had they slipped into full shadow than they were embraced by the cave's chilly breath. But the water beneath their dinghy glowed still with the light of the sun, the deep and unmarred aqua-blue of a precious gemstone. “Have you ever seen the like before,” Michele asked, “in your underground cities?”

“There are similar caves, but . . .” Georgi wrinkled his nose, as if he failed to see what Michele found so beautiful about it. “This place is devoid of life, as if it's not welcome here. I can sense neither animal nor vegetable.”

Only minerals, Michele thought, as far as the eye could see. He looked down, hoping his companion was mistaken and that he might see fish swimming inside that topaz-blue, but there were none. His stomach growled in protest.

At least that earned him a sympathetic chuckle. “We'll have to rely on what provisions we brought with us for a little while longer,” Georgi said, dipping the oars. “I hope you're not too tired of tack.”

“I suppose I'll just have to imagine it's a fat, juicy pheasant,” Michele sighed, knowing his omnivorousness offended Georgi but too hungry to care.

He jumped at the sudden jolt that hit their boat. But Georgi was unfazed. “We've hit bottom. It's too shallow to row on from here.”

They disembarked and carried the boat between them to the shore, Georgi conjuring a faerie flame for them to see by. Not far away, the cave floor rose high enough to protect them from the tide and make camp. There were even formations in the smooth limestone that could serve as low tables and chairs, around the blackened depression of a long-dead hearth.

Nor was theirs the only boat to be docked there, though that was to be expected from the tales of many failed adventures passed down through the centuries. After setting his sword and armor someplace safe, Michele found some wood that was dry and not yet lime-encrusted, breaking it into pieces to make a bed for Georgi's flame to burn upon. It was still hours before sunset, but dark as twilight in the throat of the cave.

“Tomorrow morning we'll see if we can't find a freshwater spring,” Georgi said as they ate their tack mixed with tepid water. “Who knows how many days it might take us to explore these caverns, let alone to find the Heart.”

Michele slopped his gruel, glaring at it bitterly. “ _If_ it exists.”

“Don't tell me you have doubts now, when we've come this far—”

“No,” Michele said, more to bolster his own spirits than anything. “Even if there is no Heart, or we're unable to find it, I will still complete my mission. Sara is depending on me. Our people are depending on me. Neither can afford my failure.”

Satisfied with that answer, Georgi turned back to his meal. “We'll find the villain responsible for the deaths of your countrymen, Michele, and we'll put an end to him. This I vowed to you when we set out on this voyage and I have every intention of honoring that vow. Finding that Heart will only bring us closer to our objective. With it in our possession, there is no way we can fail.

“Besides," he smiled at a memory, "my Queen was certain she beheld it in her youth—”

“Your queen who cast you out to make your way among filthy humans? For—what was her reason again—for ceasing to delight her? Reading her too much of that damned depressing poetry you're so fond of, no doubt.”

Michele kept his words honed even sharper than his sword, and they didn't fail him now. Wounded, Georgi fell silent and turned inward. “Anya would not lie,” he said after a time. “Use truth like a weapon if it suited her, yes, but she's no reason to be false where the Heart is concerned.”

“That was centuries ago. Perhaps she mistook it for another relic—”

“Perhaps you should not have brought me on this mission if you didn't believe in my research as fully as you claimed. Say the word, _sire_ , and we'll row back out the way we came at first light—”

“Do not speak to me as if you were just some hired mercenary—”

“Then don't treat me like one.”

Georgi was right of course. And it wasn't that Michele wanted to give up and admit defeat. But he had been away from Sara's side and the comforts of home for long enough, nearly driven mad with hunger and hopelessness and lack of sleep, seen good men die before his eyes or vanish in the waves. I have earned my frustration, Michele wanted to spit back. But he knew it could only cause further hurt. And Georgi, who had stayed with him faithfully through all of it, deserved better.

“By chance did your queen,” Michele began in lieu of an apology, “happen to witness its powers? Is there really any truth to what the legends say the Dark Heart can do?”

“The power to stop a man's heart in his chest?” Georgi shook his head. “With legends, there's no telling what the truth was meant to be. Perhaps it is an awesome weapon. Then again, perhaps its reputation is merely more poetry. But if that's all it is, why go to such lengths to hide it?”

“Perhaps it requires the right sort of man to wield it. One who stands before it a true believer, or whose virtue is beyond reproach.” If either were the case, Michele still had a long way to go to make himself worthy of it. Though he was trying.

“I swear to you,” he said with all the sincerity he could muster, meeting Georgi's eyes across the fire, “once we've vanquished this enemy and my people can sail and fish again without fear, you may have it. To take back to your queen or whathaveyou, with my blessing. If that relic truly possesses the sort of power only God and His angels should have, I want it far away from my country once it's served its purpose, so no-one will be tempted to use it.”

“Afraid of being struck down from on high, Misha?” Georgi said with a lopsided smile.

Yes. That was exactly what Michele was afraid of.

* * *

Georgi prided himself on his ability to sleep just about anywhere, but he feared the hard, rocky floor of the cave would test him harshly.

Fortunately, Michele found some netting in one of the abandoned boats which, when bundled up beneath their pallets, made for passable mattresses and insulated them a bit from the cold stone.

“We can begin to explore the back of the cavern at tomorrow's low tide,” Georgi said while he arranged his bed. “The map I saw in the library of Mont Royal showed an extensive system of tunnels both above and below the water line. Of course, the true extent of the labyrinth is unknown . . .”

He trailed off when he felt the weight of Michele's hand upon his shoulder, and looked up at his companion.

“I want to apologize for the things I said earlier,” Michele said.

Georgi smiled and started to turn away again. “No need. You weren't mistaken—”

“I was tired and hungry, and I took my weariness out on you. I was unfair to you, and I knew it. And still I twisted the knife. I'm sorry.”

Such somber sincerity was a rare sight in those violet eyes, Georgi couldn't help but stare. When Michele's pride was stripped away from him, Georgi could clearly see the incurable romantic who first convinced him it would be worth the risk to life and limb to come on this fool's quest. To believe in something greater than himself—something he had believed lost.

And the well of loneliness behind those eyes, deeper now than at any other point in their journey—

Georgi captured that hand upon his shoulder and held it there, albeit lightly, before Michele could draw it away again. “You could share my pallet tonight. For warmth.”

Michele swallowed hard, his throat bobbing as momentary panic flared in his eyes. But the leap of his pulse beneath Georgi's fingers told a different tale. One that didn't quite match his words. “Someone should keep watch.”

“For what? There's no-one here. Even if someone tried to sneak up on us in the night, I would know it long before they got close.” Georgi smirked. “Faeries sleep with one eye open, you know.”

“Which eye?”

“Exactly.”

It was a tempting offer. Georgi could see how it tempted. Just as he had seen Michele staring at him in quiet moments, too keenly to simply be lost in thought. His curiosity was only natural. Georgi had long been flattered by it. His heart may have been conquered by Anya long ago, but he had enjoyed a variety of companions in the years since, few who knew their own hearts and moral character as well as Michele did his.

But Michele's self-denying tendencies won out in the end. “All the same.” He slipped his hand from beneath Georgi's unhurriedly, finding no resistance. “I'll take first watch.”

* * *

It was the sadness that had been in Sara's eyes, the day Michele had made his decision, that often returned to haunt him in sleep. The understanding in them that the chances to look upon Michele from that point on would be few, and would cease entirely once his ship slipped from view. Sara knew as well as Michele did that he may never return from this quest.

However.

“This is our best option for putting an end to these attacks, once and for all,” Michele told her. “Our people cannot continue to live in fear, and watch their fathers and brothers and sons sail away, not knowing if they'll be the next ones to never return. We can't afford to lose any more of our ships—”

“Do you think I'm not aware how these attacks have weakened us? How it makes us look, that we cannot protect our own waters? Our own people?”

Sara sighed beneath the weight of the nation on her slender shoulders, sinking back into a chair that was much too large for her. “It's this latest story that troubles me,” she confessed to him in a smaller voice. As if she feared any eavesdroppers might label her mad for even entertaining its reality. “When we thought pirates were to blame, that was bad enough, but what these survivors swore they saw . . . It defies belief! It's impossible!”

“Is it, Sara? All our lives we've been hearing stories of dragons and monsters slain by Napul's rulers in the past—”

“Yes, in the _distant_ past. And those were _stories_ , Mickey. God knows our grandfather was fond of telling them, but who's to say how much truth they really hold?”

“You think God wouldn't put a creature like that on this earth? Not even to test us?”

“What I think is that even God's Creation has its limits. And you've been listening to your friend in the tower for too long.”

Sara lowered her eyes to the maps laid out upon the table, the model ships looking particularly tiny against the wide swaths of uninterrupted blue. She pressed her clasped hands worriedly to her lips. “That is what concerns me about this plan. You place more faith in Georgi's research than I ever could. And in his magic tricks.”

“ _That's_ what concerns you? That I'm laying our country's hopes on a faerie story?”

By Sara's silence, Michele knew the answer was yes. 

But what Michele burned to tell her was that, just because it was a faerie story didn't mean it couldn't also be true.

“Nevertheless, you _are_ my brother,” Sara conceded, “and my faith in _you_ remains as resolute as ever. I have to believe that if you see merit in Georgi's plan, there must be some there.”

Still, surrender had always been painful for her. “You're right, of course. These attacks on our ships cannot be allowed to continue, no matter what is to blame. We must consider them an act of war, and when an enemy has declared war, the only thing one can do to ensure their own survival is to crush that enemy completely.”

Michele could have told her that she sounded just like their father at that moment; but he noticed the furrow in Sara's brow, and saw how she struggled under the weight of his legacy. It was hard enough that Michele had decided to lead this voyage himself. He did not need another reason to doubt his own resolve.

“If the survivors' accounts are true,” Sara said, sounding more like her own self again, “and a savage beast is indeed responsible, then all the more righteous is our duty to destroy it. For the sake of those who still have their lives and their livelihoods to lose. I'll approve the release of whatever resources you need. Take the best men you can find to accompany you—”

“They are already hired, my lady. I've found a capable captain, a foreigner, with two ships sturdy enough for our purposes and a crew of mercenaries thirsting for adventure. And Georgi, of course. He will keep me safe.

“Did you think I would take our own guard,” Michele said, with a gentle smile, to the question on her brow, “deplete our own army, our navy, and leave my sister without protection? We have lost enough of our people to this monster. I will not sacrifice the one who is dearest to me.”

“But you will ask me to do the same.”

“Is there anyone you trust more to see this mission through to its end?”

The answer to that went without saying.

As long as they both had lived, Sara had always been stronger in Michele's eyes than he was himself. But he saw the fear in her eyes now—not for herself, but for him—and clutched her hands in his.

“I swear to you, Sara, before God and all His angels, that I will return to you. When this cursed beast is slain, and our people safe, I will return and never again leave your side.”

 _And you will finally see how deep my love for you is_ , he thought but dared not say. If she did not already feel it in her heart, surely she would when he returned victorious. And if not, there would be time enough to make her see.

She slipped out of his hold to pace, and Michele feared indecision still had her in its grasp.

But it was the ancient sword of their house that she removed from its proud place, and drew halfway from its scabbard to admire its ageless shine and noble words.

“I promised Father I would not take this blade down without good reason,” Sara said. “But if this does not count as our hour of need, I don't know what does.”

Michele could only stare as the light scintillating off the blade illuminated her person. Never had she looked more to him like an angel come down to Earth, in her low-cut amethyst gown, her dark hair unbound and falling gently over her breasts. The great sword emphasized her small stature, but she wielded it just as she bore the burden of governing their state: If she felt the great weight of it, she uttered no complaint. Michele wished the light would brand this vision of her into the backs of his eyelids, so he might see it every time he closed his eyes.

The sword slid home into its scabbard with a slap, and Sara extended it to him. As if she were giving him her favor before a contest.

Only this was no mere contest of skills, and they both knew Michele would need all the luck he could get. That was reason enough for Sara's gravity.

“Go with my blessing,” she said as he knelt before her, touching his bowed head to the sheathed blade. “And with the blessing and protection of our ancestors who wielded this blade before you. Use it with honor, and God willing it will bring you home victorious.”

“I will come back to you when it is done, my lady,” Michele vowed as he rose to his feet.

And as he did, he saw that there were tears pooling in Sara's eyes. As much as Michele wished he could gently wipe them away, they assured him, too, that she would miss him with all her heart—just as he would her—and would be waiting anxiously for his return.

As he left the room to prepare for the journey, Michele felt his captain of the guard leave his post and follow him.

Only when they had left Sara's company did Michele turn to address him. “What is it, Emil?”

“I want to offer my services to you.” Emil was practically breathless with excitement, like a dog restless for the start of the hunt. “I assumed you'd want me to join you on your mission, but so far you've told me nothing of your plans—”

But Michele took his shoulders in both hands and braced him. “You're not going.”

“But Micke—Michele, sire, you know my skills with a blade are second only to yours and Lady Sara's—”

“And that is why I need you here. To guard and advise Sara in my absence, and keep her safe from those who may wish her harm. There are many here who think my sister is too young and too inexperienced to lead. I don't need to tell you they're wrong, but that won't stop them from trying for her seat if she shows weakness for even an instant.”

Michele saw the light in Emil's eyes dim in disappointment and his heart went out to the young man. But this was right, Michele told himself. It pained them both, this impossible choice, but it was what was necessary. “My father may have brought you here a hostage,” Michele told him, “but these past years you've grown as dear to me as a brother. Indeed, to me, you _are_ my brother, Emil. The one God always intended Sara and me to have.”

Emil looked down at that, almost as if in shame, though Michele did not see what he had to be ashamed of.

“There is no-one else I can trust with this responsibility,” Michele said. “With you here, at Sara's side, I feel peace enough of mind to leave and do what must be done. Tell me I'm not mistaken in placing my faith in you.”

“You're not.” And he could see in Emil's eyes that the young man meant it, heart and soul. “I won't let you down, Michele, so long as I have breath left in me.”

His own hands tightened on Michele's sleeves, but it would not have been right for Emil to embrace him first in the open.

 _If you cling to_ me  _this tightly_ , Michele remembered thinking, _then surely I can leave knowing you, as I, would lay down your life for Sara. If it were necessary._

_I only pray it does not come to that._

* * *

Michele woke with tears in his eyes, mourning the vision of Sara that vanished from his sight with wakefulness. If this quest went on long enough, he wondered, would there come a day when he forgot what she looked like, or the sound of her voice?

The morning sunlight may have been partly responsible for his tears. It streamed through a crenelation in the neck of the cove and illuminated the interior of the cave, setting the stalactites sparkling like a crystal chandelier.

Georgi was already awake, heating breakfast over the low fire. “Did you sleep well?”

Michele never slept well when he dreamed of Sara. But he said as he stretched only slightly aching limbs, “Surprisingly, given the accommodations.”

Georgi hummed a laugh. “The net mattresses did the trick. There's breakfast, if you want it.”

“Let me guess. More tack.”

“What else?”

Michele's stomach growled loud enough to produce an echo; but just the thought of more of that gluey gruel did less than spur his appetite.

“Maybe later,” he said as he pushed himself to his feet. “I want to explore the back of this cavern for as long as we have natural light. After that, perhaps we can take the boat and get a better lay of the land and cove outside. Surely we can find a cache of mussels or kelp nearby.”

The light did not last long. Though they were able to find the entrances to half a dozen smaller passages that continued further into the rock before the sun moved overhead.

When they returned to their camp, Georgi sketched out a map of the cave in his journal. He claimed the passages they found matched what he remembered of the one map that was ever known to exist of the island's underground. Michele had no choice but to believe him. Still, it was nearly a century ago that Georgi had last set eyes on the map, long enough to try even the fae's long memories.

They took the boat out to explore the cove. Someone long ago had dubbed this place Pig Island, but if there were any pigs living here now, they were somewhere on the topside of the unscalable limestone cliffs that ringed the cove.

Emil would have found a way to scale them if he were here, Michele remarked, remembering his friend's daredevil tendencies fondly. But in truth, even he probably would have dismissed them as impossible. The rocks were deceptively sharp from the inclusion of minuscule shells, and crumbled in unpredictable places, making finding a handhold a terrifying endeavor. Georgi assured Michele he didn't know of any spells that could magic them to the top, either. If they had the proper rigging, perhaps, but that was beyond their reach now.

Their search by sea yielded better results. Enough seaweed to make a few days' meals. Though, much to Michele's disappointment, no meat. There were signs that shellfish had lived along the walls of the cove, but they were gone now. Judging by the fresh cuts in the rock, it appeared as though someone or something had scraped them all off not long before Michele and Georgi arrived, though what tool they could have used to do it was beyond their guessing. It must have been massive, and unwieldy, judging by the size and circular shape of the scratches.

Still, supper that night was as delicious to Michele as any of the saint day feasts he had enjoyed back home. After days of little more than tack, the seaweed was just salty and chewy enough to leave him contented. Not even Georgi's depressing love poems, sung beside the fire as the sky dimmed outside the cave mouth, could dampen Michele's mood.

This one was some sort of erotic chanty, about a traveling playboy who finally met his match, bewitched and left tossed aside by the one woman he discovered he could not live without.

After a while, though, the story hit a little too close to home. “Do you really think she'll take you back?” Michele asked as he lay listening, caught between consciousness and sleep and not sure which would win.

Georgi fell silent for a long while.

When he spoke again, it was only to say, “That poem is much better accompanied by balalaika. I can't do it justice like this.”

“I'm serious. I want to know. Say we find the Heart and you take it to her . . . Do you think it will be enough? Enough to make her love you again?”

“Are you asking for me or for yourself, Michele?”

Was he so transparent? Could Georgi feel what—or rather whom—Michele was thinking of? _Perhaps I should not have told him._

_But if not him, who?_

When he received no answer, Georgi stood and stepped out of the glow of the fire, a muttered “I'm going to bed” trailing behind him.


	2. The Captain and the Sword

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our heroes at sea.

“ _Show me your heart/ I see the brighter sky/ I'll give you my heart/ Let me be the one. . . ._ ”

As Georgi sang “A Tale of the Sleeping Prince” and strummed his balalaika, he wove in his listeners' minds the story of two lovers torn apart by a curse. Salt-cured crew members of the _Supplanter_ and her sister ship, _Overreach_ , and the mercenaries who accompanied them sat and listened like little children in nursery.

Many of them _were_ hardly more than children, even by human standards. Leo, the master of artillery, and that silently brooding bravo Seung-gil were barely twenty. Guanghong, the hotshot with harpoon, a little younger still, with the wide-eyed stare of a boy.

Whatever action they may have seen in their short lives, however, they had quickly made Georgi feel welcome, urging him to sing and play for them when they saw his balalaika. None more than Leo, who proclaimed music to be his first love. ("The music of cannons blasting in concert, maybe," Guanghong laughed, and Leo couldn't deny it.)

Leo may have heard this song before, but Georgi doubted he had heard it sung in the faerie way. If music had the power to touch one deep inside his soul, Georgi's performance went further still, making the listener feel as though he were the one the song was about. As though the subject's emotions were his emotions. The quest being told of, his quest.

“ _I'll always be/ Be there for you/ I promised to save you/ I'll save you now. . . ._ ”

Georgi held them all captive to the plucking of his fingers, enthralled to the rise and fall of his voice. It was this talent for which Anya had first fallen for him. Her favorite troubadour, his heart would soar to hear her say, who could take her to lands unseen and make her feel like anyone he wished with little more than his voice.

“( _Wake me up!)_ ” he sang both lovers' parts now, “ _No matter what I'll save you now/ (Wake me up!)/ No matter what I'll kiss you now—_ ”

This was the part in the song Georgi had long enjoyed most, when the strength of the lovers' determination to be reunited filled the listener's heart with hope they might yet overcome their curse.

These days, however, Georgi had to disconnect himself a bit from the words. He had been asked to entertain the crew, to raise their spirits, not depress them to the point of listlessness by letting his own longing bleed into the experience.

Josef Karpisek, the first mate—and just the distraction Georgi needed—appeared over Guanghong's head, arms crossed as he waited for the song to finish. So far Georgi had found him a patient man, but he did not care to press his luck, or make enemies. Being the only fae on a ship full of humans already had its disadvantages.

So, rather than continue on to the climactic verse, Georgi drew the song to a premature close and, with the promise of a reprise later, excused himself from his audience.

“The captain would like to speak to you,” Josef told him when Georgi approached.

“And Sir Michele?” It could spell trouble if the captain wanted to see Georgi alone.

But Josef assured him, “He's already in the captain's quarters. Just waiting for us to join them.”

They found the two in question bent over a map spread across the captain's table, pointing and speaking in low voices, a plate of cold pheasant and a bowl of dried figs between them.

“Ah, Josef, thank you for bringing our dear guest to us.” Captain Christophe Giacometti snapped upright at the interruption and steered Georgi deeper into the cabin, his hand wasting no time finding the small of Georgi's back. “Please stay, if you don't mind,” he said to his first mate, “I'd like another set of ears I can trust in on this conversation.”

And to Georgi: “Can I offer something to drink, er . . .” Christophe pulled on the massive drop pearl that dangled from his left earlobe as he confessed, “I'm afraid I don't know how I should address you.”

Josef chuffed a laugh. “One would think you've never had dealings with fair folk before—”

“Yes, but he was a _prince_ , Josef!” The captain said the word as if the man who possessed the title had also epitomized it. “It was clear what I was to call  _him_.”

“Georgi will do fine,” Georgi said. “I'm afraid whatever titles I may have had no longer apply.”

Something in the way he said so seemed to resonate with the captain. He smiled, as one smiles when one believes he's found a kindred spirit. “In that case, call me Christophe when we're behind closed doors. We can worry about rank and keeping up appearances in front of the rabble,” Christophe added with a wink.

Captive witness to all of this, Michele rolled his eyes. “You knew he was a faerie,” he said to Christophe, “all this time, and you didn't say anything.”

“I figured you had good reason to keep it a secret from my crew. It's not my place to ask why. But in the future, try not to keep secrets from _me_. Or you'll find they don't stay secret for very long.”

Georgi accepted a glass of sherry, though he only sipped at it, his stomach being not yet used to the motion of the sea.

He noticed the captain did not offer him any of the pheasant and, in fact, soon cleared it off the map out of politeness. A friend of fae nobility would know a little something of their ways.

Although the move may just as well have been to keep the pheasant out of reach of Christophe's white long-haired cat, who was beginning to show an interest in it.

Georgi had to admit he was intrigued by the captain's connections. There were rumors below decks that he had a bit of faerie blood in him as well; and though Georgi doubted the veracity of them, he could understand how they may have started when Christophe caught him in his green-amber stare. More likely it was Christophe's effusive personality and the aura of unwavering confidence he projected into whatever space he occupied—to say nothing of his unsettlingly good looks—that enchanted everyone around him. That sort of charisma was rare for humans to come by naturally, and invaluable for a sea captain. He must have worked hard to cultivate it.

There was at least one who seemed to be immune to it, however. Michele frowned and glared at Christophe whenever the captain touched or spoke to Georgi in an overly friendly manner. (Though it didn't seem to bother him when Christophe turned those charms on anyone else, Georgi would notice later.)

“Speaking of secrets,” Christophe said as the four of them gathered around the map, “Sir Michele tells me that you, Georgi, may be the only living soul who knows the location of this Dark Heart of Carabosse we've been hired to retrieve. And here I thought it was just a legend.”

“I thought so as well,” said Georgi. “At first. But many years ago I came upon the journals of a seaman who was the lone survivor of an expedition sent out to find it. He claimed to have seen the Heart himself and made exhaustive maps and notes of the caverns where it lay hidden.”

“You can produce a copy of this journal? I'd like to see these maps for myself.”

 _Of course you would._ A man like Christophe would be wise not to simply take Georgi and Michele at their word. Alas, in this case, he had little choice. “The journal was a private one, I'm afraid, one of a kind. It was lost, presumably destroyed, when fire razed the wing of the library where it was shelved. That was, oh, eighty years ago or so?”

“Eighty years,” Josef muttered, earning him a little laugh from Christophe. Georgi didn't look a day over twenty-seven.

“But Georgi remembers what the map looked like,” Michele was quick to back him up. “He can see it, like an imagine printed onto his mind, as fresh as the day he laid eyes on it. Isn't that right?”

It didn't exactly work that way, but Georgi was not eager to correct him in front of this audience.

Josef crossed his arms over his chest. “Even if your memory is perfect, how can you be certain this sailor's account was genuine? If he was the 'lone survivor' of his expedition, isn't it possible his account is as much fiction as it is fact?”

“I did consider that,” Georgi said. “I, too, thought the story was too outlandish to be true when I first came across it. However, the deeper into the tale I dug, the more the author's details about the Heart and its final resting place aligned with the coded clues left behind by those who accompanied it there. Only someone who had been taught the fair folk's oral histories—like myself—or heard them sung would know those clues, but his account gives no indication he had any first-hand knowledge of them.”

“But someone on that voyage must have,” Christophe said distantly, as if he could see that doomed party before him with Georgi's every word. “Someone knew exactly where to go.”

Georgi nodded. “Yes. And if the sailor's account is to be believed, they found what they were looking for on Eros.”

“You mean Pig Island.”

“It used to be called Eros. It was said that was where the god of love kept his captive bride, since it seemed one had to have wings to get in or out of it.”

“Fascinating bit of trivia. But that island's been thoroughly explored,” Christophe said dismissively. “There's nothing there but tumbleweeds and iguanas.”

“The underground hasn't been. If the stories are to be believed, the whole island is riddled with caverns. And the entrance to them can be found on the southwestern shore.”

Georgi turned the map to better face the captain and first mate. At the very end of a very spread-out archipelago, staring off into a lot of nothing, were two tiny islands, facing each other with what seemed like outstretched hands. They had new names now, given them by men, but the fair folk still knew them as Eros and Agape.

Georgi jabbed his finger next to the shoreline of the westernmost and smaller of the two islands. “This cove has been all but left alone. Many cartographers don't even bother to map it. For centuries it's been deemed inaccessible due to the reefs at sea and the monstrous cliffs overland, so they probably see it as a waste of good ink.”

“Not to mention there's nothing of value on that island and therefore little reason to risk a trip to begin with,” Josef agreed.

Georgi nodded his thanks to the man and looked up at Christophe. “There's safe anchorage for your ships on the east side of the island. A dinghy with a light crew can enter the cove by sea at high tide on a full moon night. Even seamen experienced in these waters don't know there's a cave there, so few ever see any reason to try for it.”

“But then,” said Michele, “isn't a place made barren and inaccessible by nature the perfect place to hide a priceless relic you don't want anyone to find?”

The captain and his first mate exchanged glances at that. And it seemed something had been communicated between them when Christophe turned back to the other two. “And after we find it? What do you intend to do with the Heart once you have it in your possession?”

Michele was quick to answer for both of them. “That's our business. Yours is merely to see us safely home and collect your reward. You're receiving a king's ransom for this. Isn't that enough?”

“Enough to risk both my ships and the soul of every man on them? That depends. You promised me action. That's fine. My men are used to rough seas and exotic locales. They can handle themselves in a fight. They live for danger, but I don't like not knowing what I'm endangering them _for_.”

Michele continued to glare back, tight-lipped, unsure whether the captain could be trusted with everything. Especially when he could barely believe what “everything” entailed himself.

But Georgi understood how Christophe felt. If these were his men, he would demand to be told all the particulars as well.

“We intend to use the Heart to vanquish Napul's enemies,” Georgi said.

Prompting a ponderous hum from Christophe. “Yes, Sir Michele mentioned when he first approached me that her fishing vessels are being lost at sea with increasing frequency. From what I've heard, I assume pirates are to blame for the attacks. What I don't understand is how you expect this ancient relic to help you—as you put it—vanquish them.”

“Leave that to us.”

“And when you're finished with it?”

“Then I will personally deliver the Heart to Queen Anya. For safekeeping.”

“Queen Anya?” Georgi didn't like the way Christophe slowly grinned at the mention of her name. “I've heard of her. That she consumes men's hearts and leaves them to wander the earth as empty shells of themselves, the poor miserable bastards.”

“I heard she's a thousand years old,” Josef said, “and draws her vitality from the tears of her spurned lovers.”

Christophe made a small, impressed sound. “Well, she sounds lovely.”

Georgi's cheeks burned in outrage. He could see Michele watching him out of the corner of his eye. No doubt worried Georgi might explode and sabotage the mission when it had barely begun.

“You really plan to just hand the Heart over to this woman?” Christophe wasn't sure whether he found the idea unbelievably or simply laughably absurd. “It's not as though she's here to make a claim on it.”

“The fae were its original guardians,” Michele said. “Like it or not, once the Heart has served its usefulness to us, it will be necessary to keep it sealed away again, where weaker men cannot be tempted to abuse its power.”

“I understand that. I'm just not sure this queen of yours can be trusted not to abuse it either.”

“Georgi has assured me she can.”

 _Another fib, Misha?_ But Georgi appreciated the vote of confidence.

“And I trust him,” Michele went on. “He has more years of experience traveling the world and researching magical objects than the three of us combined.”

“Well!” Christophe sighed, regarding the map one last time before he straightened. “I can't very well argue with a  _century_ of experience, now, can I?”

“Nor a king's ransom,” Josef snorted.

“Then we set our course for Pig—or, should I say, Eros Island.

“But I want details, in ink,” Christophe added, fixing Georgi and Michele each with that penetrating stare one more time, “of what to expect as we near our destination, _tout de suite_. I want maps, Monsieur Georgi, illustrations, of everything you remember of that island from your lost journal—the reefs, the caverns. The local weather, if your scribbling sailor saw fit to mention it. Spare nothing. The risk is little concern to me, but I do not wish to venture into this blind, if I can help it.”

* * *

Supper in the captain's cabin that night was an increasingly frigid affair, even if conversation remained light and amicable. The more Christophe regaled them with tales of his exploits at sea and, occasionally, on land, the more guarded Georgi felt he must be about his own past.

So Georgi was a bit surprised that, when Michele got up to head back to their spartan quarters below decks, Christophe bid Georgi to stay.

“Was the food not to your liking?” Christophe asked once they were alone. And when Georgi assured him the meal itself was fine, “Then I'm sorry. I don't know what I've done to offend you, but I want you to know that I have great admiration for your kind and I do hope the two of us can be friends. What do you say? Can we retrace our steps to the beginning, and start off again on the right foot?”

And so saying, he extended his hand in peace.

He seemed perfectly sincere to Georgi, but it was what Christophe hadn't said that kept Georgi from taking that hand. “I'm not sure. Michele neglected to tell me the captain he'd hired for his mission was a pirate.”

That got a good laugh out of Christophe.

But the hand was withdrawn. “That's because I'm a privateer. I have a letter of marque from Jean-Jacques le Roy and Isabella la Reine.”

“So you steal and slaughter and sink ships that have done you no wrong with _their_ approval. I fail to see the difference.”

“Please, you make it sound so glamorous.” But Christophe did sober at Georgi's seriousness. “I see my fair share of skirmishes, self-defense mostly, but if I'm entirely honest, smuggling accounts for the bulk of my work. Getting in and out of tight places is my forte. The _Supplanter_ here is virtually unsinkable, and the _Overreach_ can outrun anything you send after her—and I do mean anything _._ That'swhy your little Lord Crispino hired me. Well, that and there's no-one else you want at your back if we should happen to cross paths with _real_ pirates.”

Georgi still wasn't convinced Christophe didn't count as one. One monarch's privateer, after all, was another man's pirate. A commission could not change a man's nature.

But Michele's sense of honor was even stricter than Georgi's, and if he had any misgivings about Christophe's _curriculum vitae_ he was not voicing them.

And if Georgi were being entirely honest himself, shady business practices were not exactly what bothered him about the captain, nor what fascinated him at the same time.

“Besides,” Christophe purred, perhaps guessing the direction of Georgi's thoughts, “how many sea captains do you suppose would risk bringing a faerie weapon aboard their ships? When none of us even knows what it does.”

“You want to see it used. In battle.”

“Sir Michele told me he wishes to put to bed these attacks that have been devastating his country's fleet, by whatever means necessary. Given that it's most likely pirates who are responsible—they're known to raid in those waters—and you've expressed quite clearly that you have no love lost for their chosen profession . . . Can you blame me, Georgi, if I want to see something magical, something _miraculous,_ just once in my life?”

Doubtless he already had. More than once. And had grown to crave the high that came with it, as one does a drug. “You were close to this faerie prince Monsieur Karpisek mentioned, weren't you?” Georgi said.

Christophe's shrug belied the truth. “As close as close can be. Or so I thought. But we didn't part ways because I sank one too many merchant vessels, if that's what you were thinking. No, I suppose it was naïve of me to think that I, short-lived human that I am, could ever be enough to satisfy such a magnificent creature as that. You fae can cut off your hair and tip your ears, but you'll still always be _more_ than us.”

Fearing himself in danger of becoming lost in the past, Christophe leaned over and stroked his cat around the head and ears. She took that as her cue to end her nap and sashay over to Christophe, stretching up on his chest to solicit more of his affection.

“On that note,” Christophe treated Georgi to a coy glance over her head, “I hope you'll forgive my forwardness, but you strike me as a man with some experience in these matters. Speaking as one to another.”

“Like recognizes like,” Georgi did concede.

“You've lived among humanity a long time, _non_? You're missing a certain . . . light, about your person. Light like  _he_ had in spades.”

On second thought, maybe this Christophe did have a fair ancestor or two. Though none more recent than a grandparent, judging by his dusting of a mustache and beard.

“I've made a good living as a magician these past several decades,” Georgi said. “There's enough light left in me for that.”

“And certainly enough need of it in the world of men.”

“But I was a musician by training.”

“Is that so?” Christophe pulled an impressed face. “In that case, we should call for your instrument to be brought to my cabin. The two of us could entertain one another.”

Yes, Georgi was sure he was in no ways misinterpreting what sort of entertainment Christophe had in mind for him and his instrument. The sort that ended with Georgi's clothes on the floor and himself in the captain's bed. He didn't doubt Christophe's ability to amuse him, either. Thirty years ago, Christophe would have been just Georgi's type.

Only he wasn't the sort of complication Georgi needed on this trip. Not when so much was at stake. And not when Michele was waiting for his return below decks.

“I regret I must decline the offer,” Georgi said as politely as he could muster. “I do appreciate the sentiment, but the sort of songs you're asking for are best left in the past. In my old life.”

He realized he had let too much slip without thinking when Christophe raised a brow. “Your old life, hm?”

When Georgi fumbled to explain, Christophe held up a hand in apology. “No, I understand. I can't say that as a small boy, counting cows in a landlocked country, I dreamed of growing up to become a glorified rum-runner. But we all carry with us some shadows from our past to remind us that the alternative to our present situation could always be worse.”

“In my case, things were very much the other way around. I would give anything to be able to return to the paradise of my youth. I'd give my life in the attempt.”

“You don't look the type—”

“Nevertheless,” Georgi said, “I would. The hope I have that return is possible is all that makes this hell bearable.”

“ _I_ could make it bearable.”

“I doubt it.”

Christophe regarded him in silence for a short time, his expression hardening the more certain he grew of Georgi's meaning. “Am I to understand that you're rejecting my offer of friendship?”

“Begging your pardon, Captain,” Georgi said, putting the man at arm's distance once and for all, “but it's the strings attached to your friendship I'm not interested in exploring.”

“You don't wish to reconsider? You know, if I'm not careful—if I have too much to drink with my supper, say—I might accidentally let slip to my men the truth of what you are. Most of them have never seen a faerie. They might get curious—or greedy. Or angry, once they learn one was masquerading as a human right under their noses. Working who knows what sort of magic on them without their knowledge or consent. . . .”

So Christophe said while he stroked his cat with exaggerated nonchalance, all the better for the weight of his threat to sink in. But Georgi did not believe him for a second. He may have found Christophe's line of work repugnant, morally reprehensible, but he could not believe the captain was that cruel. “You could reveal me, I suppose, but that wouldn't be very sporting of you.”

When Georgi smiled, Christophe matched it. Albeit icily. “I suppose my loss is Queen Anya's gain, then.

“Or is it Sir Michele's?” Christophe amended, as if merely thinking aloud to himself and the purring cat. “Hm, I suppose there's some poetic irony there. Wouldn't you say, Choupette? An archangel and a fallen angel, joining forces on a mission forsaken by God?”

Georgi almost said he didn't know what Christophe was talking about. But if he searched his heart, he knew he wouldn't be speaking true. Only, he didn't want to search it too deeply.

In the end, Christophe must have concluded that he and Georgi were not as alike as he first thought. Or perhaps it was the ghost of that nameless prince Georgi ceased to remind him of. Either way, whatever spell Georgi's presence had unwittingly cast over Christophe dissipated.

Afterwards, the captain may have been no less civil, but he never treated Georgi with the same warmth again.

* * *

In the interest of teamwork—and to keep the company pleasant—whatever sour mood one or the other went to bed with was forgotten in the light of a new day. After a tepid soup of seaweed and broth, Michele and Georgi set to work exploring the first cavern on their list.

The cool cast of Georgi's faerie light illuminated the way and allowed him to sketch the passages they traversed or jot down his observations in his journal, all without depleting breathable air.

Or raising the ambient temperature. The caverns may have been chilly and damp at the start of the day, but between the pressure of the walls and the body heat they expelled climbing up and down and over obstacles, it wasn't long before that humidity became oppressive.

But the caverns were a world unlike anything Michele had seen. The cool glow of Georgi's light set almost every surface it touched sparkling, like morning sunlight upon fresh snow. There were pillars as tall as houses that looked as though a thousand years' worth of candle wax had dripped down their sides. Magnificent draperies of translucent rock that, from a distance, appeared soft and pliable as velvet, but rang like bells at the lightest rap. Shadows played tricks with stalagmites, making the very rock seem to breathe or move as the faerie light floated past, an effect that set Michele's heart racing every couple of minutes, even if consciously he knew there was no danger.

Georgi seemed less impressed by these natural wonders than by the signs of intelligent life they encountered along the way. A smudge of carbon along an overhang told of torches or lanterns gone by. A name scrawled on a wall, a testament to man's timeless vanity. He seemed most taken with the impression of a boot, somehow kept dry enough to be preserved who knew how many centuries after it was made.

Michele wished he could say the same of his own boots. He swore they hadn't dried out since the two of them had landed on this island. How could they, when every few yards it seemed he was tramping through yet another puddle?

He didn't notice how deep the next one was, and stepped into a hole and sank down to his chest before he could catch himself, flailing in the small pool.

Georgi's hand was there at his elbow to hook him and pull him back up, but Michele shrugged him off.

“You could have warned me what was ahead!” His words, like his splashing, resonated in the cavern, the rock seeming to magnify the desperation in them.

“I was looking at my notes.” It was hardly an apology. “And this is precisely why I told you to leave your armor back at camp. We don't know how deep these holes go. You're lucky that one wasn't larger.”

In fact, while Georgi was on the subject: “Just take the whole suit off and leave it on that shelf. It'll stay dry, we can pick it up on our way back. You might just feel more comfortable, too.”

“And leave myself unprotected?” Outrageous. “What if we encounter something alive, sleeping in the back of this cavern? We wake it up, it attacks—”

“I told you. I'll know it if we have company. Of any sort. Consider me your early warning system.”

Michele grumbled a comeback under his breath. Something absolving him of culpability when Georgi's sixth sense inevitably failed him.

But Michele knew that if, next time, he stepped into a pool deeper than he was tall—or worse, the floor of the passage gave way beneath his feet—it wouldn't matter how powerful a swimmer he was, he would go down like a stone. Should that happen, he couldn't depend on Georgi's magic to save him in time. A sort of clammy panic came over Michele when he merely thought about his lungs filling with water, the light of the surface fading farther from reach as he sank deeper into the dark abyss—

He tugged at the buckles and laces of his armor with shaking fingers, thankful Georgi couldn't see how they trembled in the dark. 

Nor was Michele about to mention that he already felt refreshed without the weight of all the metal close about him.

“But I'm bringing the sword,” he said while he carefully stacked his armor on the rock shelf Georgi had pointed out. “If we do encounter trouble, I can't rely on that pencil of yours to save me.”

Michele could practically hear Georgi's smile in the dark. But thankfully Georgi had the decency not to mention all the magic he could summon to their aid with the snap of his fingers. “As you wish.”

* * *

There was no keeping the armor from rusting, Michele supposed. When they returned to camp, he placed it in a neat pile high on the rocks, wrapped in the driest oilcloth he could find. He would just have to hope that it could be restored to its true lustre once he and Georgi had returned to Napul.

The sword was another matter. Michele had sworn to protect and honor her, just as she was made to protect him. As they sat about the fire after supper, Georgi humming and scribbling in his journal, Michele took her out of her scabbard and wiped her down. They had no oil to spare, but he could at least make sure her blade and gemstones stayed free of briny scum.

After a while, Georgi's humming stopped, and Michele began to feel the weight of his companion's gaze on him.

“I would ask if you want to hold her,” Michele said without looking up, “but I know you'd prefer not to touch anything containing iron.”

Georgi chuckled at that. Perhaps at having _his_ thoughts read for a change. Or perhaps at how Michele spoke of the blade as if it were a woman. “It's not the iron fae find repulsive,” Georgi corrected him. “It's what's done with it. I can wield a paring knife as well as the next man.”

“But swords are made to maim and kill. Is that it?”

“That's the long and short of it.” Georgi said so without any malice, but it still rang like an accusation. As if in apology, he lowered his stick of graphite: “Does she have a name? A sword like that always seems to have one. Like Giant Slayer, or Penetrating Wrath. Or Well Hung.”

Michele snorted. “They do sound like they're compensating for something, don't they?”

Then he sobered. His steel lady was above such vulgar names. She was a bastion of chastity beneath the stroke of his hand, the modest curves of her amethyst-inset hand guard tapering down to a blade straight and sharp and ruthless. The epitome of everything Sara must be in his heart. Certainly not some crude phallic metaphor.

“Serenade,” Michele said, as much to the sword as to Georgi. “Her name is Serenade. Serenade For Two, to be exact.”

“Ah.” Georgi tilted his head. “For how sweetly she sings?”

And here Michele had thought Serenade was a rather original name for a sword. “I didn't choose the name,” he mumbled. But he was proud of her pedigree. “My great-great-grandfather renamed her when he had her restored. If you believe the stories, she's been the guardian of Napul ever since its founders, twin brothers, forged their two swords into one.”

“Right. Before one betrayed and murdered the other,” Georgi said, not without a fair bit of disgust, “and stole his own brother's wife and kingdom for himself while the corpse was still warm. That sword didn't save Napul from being conquered by one foreign power after another, either. Including the pious House of Crispin.”

Michele should have known that a man who spent most of his time with his nose buried in old books would know that story as well or better than Michele did himself. Somehow that history no longer sounded as glorious as it did when Michele had heard it as a child. “Anyway,” he kept his gaze down, chastened, “that's why it takes two hands to wield her.”

“That sword is cursed. You should have let it sink to the bottom of the ocean.”

“Because of the story about the brothers?”

“Because it has slain gods,” Georgi said. “Their blood is still on it, like a lacquer of tar from the pits of Hell. _That's_ why I don't want to touch it. It's black with sin.”

Not to Michele's eyes. To him, Serenade shone even in the shadow of the cave with a faintly golden lustre, her inset stones deep and clear, free of chips and inclusions. No, Georgi had to be wrong. “What you call gods, I call monsters, demons. The world is better off without them in it. Safer.”

“That may be true, for the world of _men_ , but it doesn't change the fact: That sword is stained beyond what can be cleaned or restored away.”

“And you've felt this all this time? You slept right next to her in a boat, and you never once mentioned it made you so uncomfortable.”

“What would my complaints have accomplished? You weren't going to get rid of it, and I could hardly ask you to, seeing as you seem to value that accursed sword more than your own life.”

Michele could feel his blood pressure rising within him with each accusation. As if it were Michele himself Georgi was attacking. Or worse. “Are you saying I should just throw her into the sea? And leave us here without protection? What if pirates get through the reef and try to slaughter us in the night, never mind that . . . that red _devil_ out there!”

At last he succeeded in wiping the smug from Georgi's lips. A small triumph, but it didn't last long.

“Just keep it away from me,” Georgi muttered, looking away. “That's all I ask.”

“Well, you have nothing to worry about, then. I and my damned filthy sword will give you all the space you wish.”

And punctuating his vow by snapping Serenade back into her scabbard, Michele got to his feet to move his pallet farther away forthwith.

* * *

It quickly became clear to Michele that he had underestimated Seung-gil. Almost stoic as a statue when at rest, the young bravo came alive with a sword in his hand. With the brutal timing of a dance instructor, Seung-gil beat Michele back with thrust after seemingly effortless thrust, leaving him little time to think about anything but parrying.

Michele would have felt much less naked and unsure if they were both wearing armor. He would not have to pull his blows with the real, sharpened sabre in his hand before it could land a touch, or worry about Seung-gil doing serious injury to him.

But then it wouldn't be a fair fight. And Michele wanted, if nothing else, for this to be seen as a fair fight.

Because the crowd, he soon learned, was not with him.

“Come on, Seung-gil!” Leo cupped his hands around his mouth to shout above their cheering (and jeering) audience. “Thrash his spoiled, high-table-sittin' ass!”

“What do you think I'm trying to do?” Seung-gil muttered back, but his glare he reserved for Michele alone.

Michele dodged and twisted as he was pressed steadily back across the deck. It didn't help matters that the rainbow of colored ribbons tied into Seung-gil's sleeves obscured the movement of his sword (one for each man he had slain, the way Michele had heard it told). Before Michele knew it, Seung-gil had him physically over a barrel, with nowhere else to go but to bend backwards. Michele raised his sabre to block, gritting his teeth as Seung-gil's blade slid down to press against Michele's hand guard, demanding his surrender.

But what Seung-gil didn't know was that Michele fought better from a defensive position. Like a cornered animal, being forced into a tight spot narrowed his field of vision, made time seem to slow down around him. He raised his elbow and twisted his wrist in a risky maneuver that would have momentarily freed Seung-gil's blade to slide in close to Michele's ear— _if_ his opponent were not concerned himself about losing an eye.

Seeing the point of Michele's sword suddenly swing out toward his face, Seung-gil flinched backwards. It was all the opening Michele needed to turn the tables in his favor.

He launched off the barrel and attacked, swinging wide and varying the angle of his blows, even though doing so would cause him to tire sooner. Leo groaned and Guanghong squeaked a worried “Nonononono!” indicating to Michele his suspicions about the bravo were right. Seung-gil was a jabber, skilled at conserving his energy while maximizing lethality, and always trying to think several moves ahead, even while in the middle of a fight. He was counting on Michele to be predictable.

Michele could tell by the change in the timbre of their blades' ringing, if not by the furrow on the other's brow, that Seung-gil was getting frustrated, though to anyone watching it would appear as though he still had the upper hand.

So Michele almost missed the feint. His heart leaped into his throat, and he feared he had miscalculated when he stepped in toward it.

But Seung-gil had already started to put his plan into motion and, thinking he had fooled Michele, followed through. Only to find Michele's sabre not where Seung-gil had expected it, but pointed at the exposed outside of his armpit. A potentially lethal blow had theirs been a duel to the blood.

Michele was prepared for Seung-gil to take his defeat hard—he seemed a prideful sort—but to his surprise, the young man grinned. The first time Michele had seen him smile this whole voyage. “Well played, Sir Michele. I yield.”

They lowered their sabres, finally able to relax their burning muscles and breathe deeply. “How did you catch my feint?” Seung-gil wanted to know as he clasped Michele's hand.

“Simple. An honorable fighter doesn't need trickery. He chooses his blows and commits.”

That earned Michele a small chuckle. “Are you saying I fight dishonorably?” Seung-gil almost looked as though he took that as a compliment.

“Quite the opposite. The commitment you showed your deception was what did you in.”

Seung-gil pulled Michele to him to clap him on the shoulder before releasing his hand.

What took Michele aback was when Seung-gil also muttered beside his ear, just low enough for Michele alone to hear, and with no doubt as to his meaning: “I wouldn't mind a rematch later in the cargo hold, if it suits your fancy. Only without the audience. And the steel.”

Michele had no words with which to respond to that. They all seemed to catch in his throat as his blood surged, and he was sure Seung-gil could not have missed it rushing to his face.

To complicate matters further, up close, Seung-gil was disarmingly beautiful. His lithe figure almost like a woman's—like a certain woman's. In the dark of the cargo hold, Michele might be able to fool himself that the legs wrapped around his waist, or the mouth against his, belonged to her. _The nerve of this man_ , he thought,  _to toss out a proposition like that, bold as you please, in front of the whole crew. . . ._

But it was clear that no-one was paying the least bit of attention to the two duelers. They were all too busy unhappily losing their money to Georgi, who seemed to be the only one to have wagered against Seung-gil.

Or perhaps there was another. The captain and his first mate watched from the quarterdeck, the former leaning over the balustrade with an amused chuckle. The chuckle of a man just made a little richer.

“That should teach you to bet against the patron of this voyage,” Christophe called down to Leo and Guanghong, who were complaining the loudest about the likelihood they'd been cheated. “Perhaps Monsieur Georgi will let you win back some of your losses in a game of chance, though I doubt it.”

“Why wait?” said Guanghong. “I'll take my opportunity now, if Georgi doesn't mind. It's about time you showed us whether you can hold your own in a fight,” he said to the man in question, “or if you'll be depending on one of us to save you when things get hairy.”

And so saying, Guanghong drew one of his own throwing daggers from his belt, flipped it easily in his hand, and extended it, handle outward, to Georgi.

Michele started. Everyone knew faeries wouldn't willingly touch iron weapons. But none of the crew knew Georgi was one. No-one but himself and Josef, and the captain, who looked just as worried at the suggestion as Michele felt. If Georgi didn't accept Guanghong's challenge, he would lose credibility with the crew—credibility he and Michele would need intact when they reached Eros. Perhaps worse, Georgi could be exposed for what he was.

“Yes, Georgi,” Michele heard himself say, projecting his voice lest anyone mishear him. “Why don't you and _I_ give these men a demonstration?” He handed his sabre to Seung-gil, who yielded the floor. “In hand-to-hand combat.”

“I'm game for that,” Georgi agreed, rising from his seat and removing his jacket.

And the intensity with which he met Michele's stare across the deck made Michele eager to engage him. After Seung-gil's offer, Michele itched beneath his skin for the crashing and grappling of another body against his, albeit one a little more familiar. One that didn't have such amorous intentions toward him.

Guanghong seemed a little disappointed that he wasn't going to be allowed to fight himself, but he settled down again beside Leo without further complaint.

After weighing the two, Leo said, “My money's on Georgi.”

“Are you sure you want to bet against me twice?” Michele shot back.

That started a rumble of discussion among the men as they tried to decide which of the two combatants was most likely to emerge triumphant: the proven winner who had just finished one taxing fight, or the unknown who seemed better suited to a duel of musical instruments or pretty words than fists.

“Why don't we make a different sort of wager?” Christophe suggested. “If Sir Michele wins the bout, Monsieur Georgi returns his winnings, with extra.”

Seung-gil smirked as he leaned against the mast.

“And if _I_ win,” Georgi riposted, raising his voice over the mutterings of approval and looking straight into the captain's eyes, “not only do I get to keep what I earned, but when we reach the next port, dinner is on King JJ and Queen Isabella!”

* * *

“Still, you didn't have to throw me so hard,” Michele complained as he followed Georgi below deck. “Nearly wrenched my arm out of its socket. Admit it, you just wanted an excuse to show off your flexibility in front of the captain.”

Georgi smiled. “Oh, just like you capitulated in order to save face with Monsieur Lee?”

“I did _not_ capitulate,” Michele groused, feeling thoroughly trounced. And Georgi had it wrong. Giving Seung-gil anything that might be taken as encouragement—no matter how beguiling he was—was the last thing Michele wanted to do. “It was my plan all along to let you win. I figured you'd prefer not to return your winnings.”

“Ah, so _that's_ how it was.” Georgi wasn't fooled by Michele's excuses for one second. “I'll give you this: You certainly made your losing performance convincing.”

When he was sure they would not be overheard, Georgi sobered and said, “I fear he's planning to double-cross us.”

“Seung-gil? Don't be ridiculous, he'd have no reason—”

“I'm talking about the captain.”

For a moment, Michele could only blink back at him, unsure if Georgi was serious. “He's given no indication.”

“Of course, he wouldn't. Not while we're still useful to him. I suspect he plans to keep the Heart of Carabosse for himself once we've found it. Not to use—at least, I don't think so,” Georgi furrowed his brow, “he doesn't strike me as the type. Perhaps to auction off to the highest bidder?”

“I thought _I_ was the highest bidder,” Michele told him with a wry grin.

But Georgi didn't return it. “I should not have told him about Anya. I'm afraid I might have given him the wrong idea, that the Heart could be used to win back lost love.”

“How do you know this? Did he tell you?” Even now Michele had trouble believing it could be true. Giacometti had given his word as a gentleman. Contracts had been signed. The captain was accountable to king and queen, for God's sake.

When Georgi hesitated to answer, Michele assumed the answer was no. “Then this is mere conjecture—”

“You're too quick to judge,” Georgi said instead. “You assume everyone is like you, that when they take an oath they would die before breaking it. But the captain's not like you, Michele. Believe me. I know how the mercenary mind works. These sorts, they think only with their coin purses and ledgers. And there's always someone who can pay more.”

“Then I'll be that man. I'll pay him whatever he likes. If not in gold, then land, food, steel—I don't care about the price.” Michele knew Georgi, with his century of experience in the world of men, probably took him for a fool—an innocent babe, even—but it did not matter to him. “I _need_ that Heart, Georgi. I need its power.”

“I know.”

“If we don't find a way to stop these attacks, and soon, then Sara—” Michele couldn't bring himself to finish that sentence.

He didn't have to. “I know,” Georgi said.

“Then you know that if I have to make a deal with the Devil himself to get it, I'm willing to pay that price.”

Michele could see in Georgi's eyes how desperately the fae wanted to refute him, to ward off the gravity of those words, which hung heavy between them like an invocation. But he must have known there was no changing Michele's mind.

Georgi settled for placing a hand on Michele's shoulder _._ “Maybe you won't have to.”

Michele blanched. “You're not going to . . .” he struggled to find words he could say without tripping over them, “let the captain strum your balalaika . . . are you?”

To his relief, Georgi snorted. “No. But he is a man, and men can be manipulated.”

It took Michele another moment to take the next logical step, and by then Georgi had already moved on. “Wait. _I'm_ a man. Would you manipulate _me_?”

Georgi's “What makes you think I haven't?” said jocularly over his shoulder did little to put Michele's mind at ease.

* * *

The moaning was what woke Georgi. He'd been dreaming about Anya, too, for the first time in years. He could still see her face before him, as fresh and as beautiful and cruel as the day he'd left.

As badly as he wished he could sink back down into the Anya of his dream, fool himself for even just a little while that she was real, Georgi knew he would only be torturing himself.

So he got up and walked carefully through the dark to where Michele lay.

On all their adventures so far, Georgi hadn't known Michele to talk or move about much in his sleep. It must have been an exceptionally disturbing dream to wring a whimper from him, and make him twitch and writhe beneath his blanket.

As long as this went on, Georgi knew, neither of them would get a good night's rest. He put his hand to Michele's forehead and thought of calming things.

A meadow alive with the singing of insects on a warm summer day—somewhere far away from here—and the clean, green smell of grass.

The twins' favorite dessert, that they had shared with Georgi on a few occasions—a mite too sweet for his tastes, but with a nutty, faintly flowery aroma that was like heaven to him.

An aroma that reminded him of _her_. And the music he had played for _her,_ in  _her_ hallowed halls, inspired—as all things were for him in those days—by his love for  _her._

And the words like the most beautiful music she had whispered in his ear, dripping like honey from those full, dark lips, and how warm her heart had beat beneath him as he lay pillowed on her breast, and how he'd thought that he would rather die right there and then than ever that moment have to end. . . .

The brow beneath Georgi's hand smoothed, and Michele's body and breathing relaxed. Thinking he had drifted off into some gentler waters, Georgi got back to his feet—

“I was dreaming of her.”

He wasn't sure Michele had said those words in his sleep or if he was awake. Hedging his bets, Georgi said nothing.

“You did that. Didn't you?” Definitely awake. “I was in a terrible place . . . and suddenly . . . I wasn't. I was with  _her_ , and I never wanted to wake up.”

The way Michele's voice hardened at the end, Georgi took it as an indictment. He knew it wasn't Anya that Michele had been dreaming of.

“I didn't mean to,” Georgi said. _I never meant to give you her, let alone take you away from her again. If you'd believe me._ “Go back to sleep.”

It wasn't merely a suggestion. With a subtle flick of his fingers, he could sense Michele's brain waves mellowing out again, his mind drifting like a boat unmoored. With any luck, he wouldn't dream at all for the rest of the night.

Georgi hoped Michele would take that as his apology. Or, better yet, that he would remember none of this upon waking.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Lyrics_ quoted in this chapter are, of course, from Georgi's FS music, "A Tales of Sleeping Prince," by Umebayashi Tarō.
> 
> For anyone curious about name origins, the names of Chris's ships, _Supplanter_ and _Overreach_ , are some of the possible meanings of Jacob, from which Giacometti is circuitously derived.


	3. The Light in the Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The monster enters.

Another day of waking up to the same surroundings, another stretch of caverns to explore.

After a hundred years, Georgi was used to monotony, in his daily life and his work. He was used to solitude—had even grown to like it.

But Michele was taking it hard.

Georgi could see the cracks begin to form. A few days of kelp and Michele's appetite faded again. He complained of needing protein, needing meat, needing strong coffee, or strong liquor. Complained of the bleakness of his surroundings, of just wanting to see a speck of green when he looked outside. His focus waned during their daily surveying of the caverns. What downtime they had he spent lying on his back on his pallet, staring at the ceiling.

He became obsessed with scavenging for food in the cove, sitting out in the sun in the dinghy for hours until Georgi could feel the heat radiating from Michele's skin when he returned. He was getting browner.

Before too long, he would be skinnier as well. Georgi had started to make notes on Michele's condition in his journal, alongside his maps and poetry and observations on the weather. Perhaps in case he needed them as proof later. Though he did not want to dwell too long on why he would.

“Nothing.”

Michele threw the oar shaft he had fashioned into a spear into the shallows as he swore. But even that failed to have the intended impact, as there was no soft bottom for the spear to sink into.

“There's nothing here,” he growled as he strode past Georgi. “No fish, no mussels, no snails or urchins. No seabirds, no iguanas—no _pigs._ On _Pig Island._ Not even any more of that God-forsaken seaweed. . . .”

Despair and hunger had wrung everything out of Michele until not even tears of frustration were left in him. Georgi didn't want to tell him they wouldn't have to suffer tack for very much longer.

If they didn't find another food source, they would soon have nothing to eat. They needed to start discussing their options in earnest. Whether to risk the rocks—and their boat—outside the cove, see if some provisions could be obtained in those rougher waters. Or if they would be better off abandoning the island, and the search for the Heart, entirely.

And be set adrift in hostile waters—assuming they made it back over the reef—with no defenses but Michele's sword and Georgi's spells, and an utterly useless suit of light armor.

Because no matter which option they chose, that thing was still out there somewhere in the open sea, waiting for them.

* * *

It was being thrown from his bed that woke Michele out of a dead sleep.

He swore as he clutched his throbbing head, curling into a ball. Goddamn sea travel, he would never grow used to it. Though he was quickly beginning to see why the crew slept in hammocks.

The ship groaned around him like a thing that was violently ill, and heaved him back the other direction, tossing luggage and odds and ends on top of him. Just his luck to be caught in a storm.

On second thought, not a storm. Michele distinctly heard a thud and scrape against the ship's hull. They were hitting something. But they were too far south for icebergs. _Oh God—we've run aground!_

Unless something was hitting _them_.

That was when he heard the cannon fire. It didn't shake the ship, so it must have come from the _Overreach._ Leo was firing at someone. But at whom was the question.

In the belly of the _Supplanter,_ what members of the crew weren't yet awake were being awoken by their fellows, shaken either by hand or the shouting above-deck. Michele pulled himself as upright as he was able as the ship yawed again, bracing himself against his cabin's doorframe. He had to find Georgi. And then the captain. The captain would be able to explain what was going on.

Seung-gil found him first. “Get your sword! We need all hands on deck!” he shouted. And then something else that another blast of the cannons drowned out. Michele thought he read on Seung-gil's lips that they were under attack.

Michele's heart dropped into his stomach. Then his training kicked in, and he reached for his armor. “Pirates?” he asked as he started to pull it on.

“What?”

“Are we being attacked by pirates?”

Seung-gil just barked an incredulous laugh. “What are you doing? You'll go down like a stone if you go over the side in that.” He tore the armor from Michele and threw it down on the bed, grabbing Michele's sword and his wrist himself and wrenching him in the direction of the stairs.

Above deck was chaos, the crew hurrying about, securing cargo, pointing over the sides, shouting at one another. It was too much for Michele to make sense of.

All he knew was that there was no other ship in sight. Their two vessels were alone in calm waters—and that he could see clearly, as there was light enough to read by despite it being the dead of night.

Probably the moon; Michele dismissed the phenomenon without another thought as he fumbled with his sword belt. He needed to speak to the captain, find out what was going on—

A cannonball whizzed nearby, landing in the water close to the side of their ship. It rocked beneath Michele and Seung-gil's feet with the force of impact.

“That came from the _Overreach_ ,” Seung-gil said, eyes narrowing in irritation.

But Michele didn't understand. “Why would Leo be firing on us?” Was this a mutiny, like he'd heard stories about back home?

If he squinted, he could see Leo and Karpisek on the other ship, waving their arms and yelling something to him and Seung-gil at the top of their lungs. But Michele couldn't make out the words.

Whatever the first mate was trying to draw their attention to, Seung-gil saw it. Michele had just enough time to recognize the look of terror that crossed his face before Seung-gil pushed him to the deck.

Before Michele could ask him what for, a pale and slimy arm as thick around as a sturdy branch arched over the side of the ship. In an instant it had coiled itself around Seung-gil's waist and plucked him from the deck, as easily as a child plucks a toy soldier from his battlefield, and pulled him down over the side. He didn't even have time to draw his sword.

Michele couldn't scream. He couldn't move.

He could barely believe his own eyes. Seung-gil, gone. _Just like that._

The arm looping under Michele's and trying to drag him away from the side startled him, and he latched on in panic.

But it was only Georgi. “Seung-gil,” Michele gasped at him, “it took him! He couldn't even—there wasn't time—”

“I know,” Georgi said. “I saw.”

 _No, you don't understand!_ “That could have been me.” Michele had been standing _right there,_ in that very spot. If Seung-gil hadn't seen the threat when he did—if he hadn't pushed Michele out of the way at that very second— “That should have been me!”

Even now Michele could feel that muscular arm wrapping around his waist. He fought it with everything he had.

“Keep firing your harpoons! Monsieur Ji, stick the bastard full of needles!” Christophe shouted while he loaded a pistol. Pausing only to order anyone who would listen, “And someone put those lanterns out before one of them starts a fire! Georgi, get that blasted lifeline on him, for fuck's sake.”

Georgi insisted, “I'm trying,” but it wasn't going well with Michele tearing the rope off himself as fast as Georgi could loop it around him. Cursing under his breath, Christophe hurried to help.

But too late. Another colossal arm reached out of the water and slapped up onto the starboard deck. Then another. And another, whipping and coiling, grabbing onto any purchase it could find. It curled around the mounted harpoon gun and tore it out of the deck wholesale, forcing Guanghong to leap back and duck flying splinters.

And still the monster reached. The ship shuddered beneath them and it occurred to Michele like a splash of icy water down his back: The creature was trying to pull itself aboard.

But the weight of it proved just too much for the _Supplanter_. She began to tip toward the beast, like a glass of wine about to be drunk. Anything not tied down slid and slammed into the gunwale or tumbled overboard. Even men secured by their lifelines lost their balance and flailed like puppets. And what good would a lifeline do if one of those determined arms grabbed hold of a man, and pulled?

Michele hadn't had time to properly secure his sword belt in the chaos, and now he watched helplessly as Serenade slipped free and slid across the deck of the ship, toward that creature and the sea.

Michele didn't think, just acted. He couldn't let that sword disappear into the darkness like Seung-gil had. What else would he have to defend himself with? And what would Sara think, when she had entrusted it to him, blessed him and it with her favor? Without that sword, this whole mission may as well be doomed.

Ignoring Georgi's shouts, Michele loosened his lifeline just enough to make a desperate lunge. His fingers wrapped around the scabbard at the very last moment, his heart soaring with relief.

Until he looked up.

Or rather, down. And into the glassy eye of the giant squid.

Blue and gold patches in its skin pulsated and illuminated the water around the squid like faerie lights, flashing in hypnotic patterns along its arms and a still-submerged mantle that seemed to have no end. It heaved itself further out of the water, its toothed suckers scratching rings into the wood, and the deck tilted further toward vertical, sending heavy crates and barrels rolling just inches past Michele's head toward the sea.

But Michele barely registered that danger. He could barely remember to breathe. He could not tear himself away from that enormous eye—until the moment he felt his lifeline slip.

Georgi's fingers digging sharp into his wrist halted his fall. “Grab on to me!” he shouted, over the creaking and groaning of the ship and the crack of Christophe's pistol.

But Michele couldn't grab on. Not with the sword in one hand, and the other unable to twist around in Georgi's pinching hold. “Don't let go!” It was as much a prayer as an entreaty. When he looked down, it was into the face of Death itself.

And Michele very much did not want to die. Not that way. For God's sake, not that way!

“I won't,” Georgi gritted out. It was more than just a promise. He must have used what magic he could muster to enchant the two of them, for suddenly it felt to Michele that their flesh and bones were bound together by some force even stronger than Georgi's grip.

But even that wasn't reassurance enough. The squid could see them now. All it needed was to free an arm and all the magic in Georgi's body wouldn't be enough to save them from its grasp.

 _So at least I won't fall alone,_ Michele thought. _We'll go down to be consumed by that beast together._

Beside them, Christophe swore as his pistol jammed. “Any day now, Monsieur de la Iglesia!”

Perhaps Leo heard him. Or perhaps it had merely taken him until that moment to line up his shot and light it. The _Overreach_ 's cannons roared a heartbeat later, sending a volley of fire to pummel the giant squid.

The creature reeled and let go of the _Supplanter_ , blanching bone-white as it retracted from the source of its pain, painting her hull and the sea around her black with ink.

But they couldn't breathe easy yet. Released by her captor, the ship rocked hard back to port, tossing everyone still aboard her like rag dolls before slamming them onto the deck.

When they had recovered enough to push themselves to their feet, they rushed to the side. Each of them, Michele was sure, praying the monster had gone back down to the deep, never to be seen or heard of again.

But Leo was still firing. Only now his guns were aimed at the water to  _Overreach_ 's aft, while men scrambled to unfurl her sails. Slowly at first, the distance between the two ships increased. “He's trying to draw it off us,” Christophe said, his voice full of grateful relief.

But he must have known, even before it happened, that the smaller ship would not get the speed she needed in such short order. Not against a foe such as theirs.

Even as her stern chasers fired upon the squid, its tentacles shot out like two jousting lances below the water, hammering her hull until it rang. Red and white flashed rapid-fire under the waves, like flames lashing over the squid's skin. In a single spurt, the entire length of the beast dove beneath the ship and surfaced on the other side. Shooting halfway out of the water, blood-red and angry, it grabbed the foremast in its muscular arms and yanked, snapping the massive timber in half as its tentacles thrashed about the deck of the ship.

“ _Nooo!_ ” Guanghong screamed, leaning as far as he dared over the gunwale. “ _Leo! LEOOO!_ ”

But there was nothing he could do. The _Overreach_ and the squid were out of their weapons' range.

There was nothing any of them could do. Just listen to the screams of their comrades trapped on that doomed ship, and the cracking and splintering of wood in the squid's tightening embrace. Leo put up a fight for as long as he could, his guns flashing until, somewhere, a wayward flame touched gunpowder. The ensuing explosion ripped the ship in half, and turned her main sail into a blazing torch.

It all happened too fast to believe. Within minutes the whole thing, squid, ship and all souls still aboard, were swallowed by inky blackness. The sea around them quickly returning to an eerie calm.

No-one seemed to know what to say. They stood stunned, as if waiting for the other ship and its crew to resurface. Or else for the squid, to come and finish them off.

Eventually Christophe restored some sense of order, offering words of reassurance to his men. Michele didn't hear what they were; they seemed to pass through one ear and out the other without sinking in. Guanghong was shouting himself hoarse and refused to leave the side of the ship, hoping Leo might still emerge from the black water.

Michele couldn't stand to listen to his pleas. Someone nearby started to moan and he clapped his hands over his ears, trying to shut out the noise.

But he could still hear the desperate cries of those men on the other ship—the ship that sounded as though she were in pain herself as she was twisted apart. And the squid . . .

Michele knew it had to be his imagination, the terror of what he had just witnessed playing tricks with his mind, but he could swear that when the squid went white all over, he heard it screaming. He couldn't _stop_ hearing its scream!

“It's alright now, we're safe, it's gone,” Georgi murmured over him as if chanting a spell. As if he could will it so if he just said the words.

But couldn't he see it wasn't alright? Didn't he know they weren't safe?

Georgi put out a hand to lay on Michele's shoulder, but Michele latched onto his sleeve instead, and yanked him down to eye level.

“It saw us!” Michele hissed at him. “You felt it too, didn't you? When you looked in its eye? It knew who we were.”

Georgi blinked back at him, too startled to answer.

But Michele could see the fear that was still in his eyes, and he knew he wasn't wrong.

“I don't know how, but it knew we were looking for it—and _it_ _found us_!”

“What's he talking about?” Michele's ranting had captured Christophe's attention, and he glanced between the two of them before deciding he would get a saner answer from Georgi. “What does he mean, 'it found us'?”

“Nothing,” Georgi said, wishing Michele would take that as a hint to shut his mouth. “He's just looked Death in the face and lived. He's not making any sense.”

But Christophe wasn't buying it. He seized Georgi by the shirt front and jerked him away from Michele's side. Then marched Georgi into his cabin and slammed the door behind them.

* * *

“If you'll just let me explain,” Georgi began.

But before he could, Christophe had an arm across Georgi's chest, pushing him back hard against the edge of the table.

Christophe's eyes were wild in the dark of the cabin, his fingers tight around Georgi's shirt like the jaws of some desperate creature. “You had better explain,” he said through his teeth, “and none of your faerie mind tricks while you're at it. The mood I'm in, I may be inclined to throw you overboard if I feel so much as a tickle in my head.”

Georgi nodded, swallowing hard lest the captain take even an innocent word of acknowledgement as an attempt at thought control.

Christophe released him, but he didn't back off more than a step. “Well? You can start by telling me what your friend meant when he said you were looking for that creature.”

Georgi looked instinctively toward the exit, but he knew there was no escaping this conversation any longer. They were lucky just to have escaped with their lives long enough to have it.

“We had some intelligence, survivor accounts, that indicated some sort of sea monster was to blame for the attacks on fishing vessels. From their descriptions, it sounded as though they saw a giant squid.”

“Then why is this the first I'm hearing of it?”

“You saw that thing!” Even in the closed cabin, Georgi felt compelled to whisper. As if that squid, wherever it was now, could hear him talking about it through the walls of the ship and all the water that separated them. “Even if we had told you we were looking for a squid the length of a ship, would you have believed us? Without proof—with nothing but our word?”

Christophe conceded after a moment's thought: “I've come across whale carcasses with scars the size of dinner plates on their flanks. I'll admit, I didn't want to dwell long on what might have made them. My men have pulled giant squid out of the water before, but none half that size. Certainly none capable of sinking a ship.”

“So you understand why we weren't sure we could believe the survivors' stories. We told ourselves they were so traumatized by their experiences, they must have exaggerated the size of their attacker. Or invented some tall tale of a sea monster to absolve themselves or someone else of blame.”

But Georgi believed those survivors now. Each and every word. He wished he could go back and visit his naïve self of only a month ago, warn him just what he and Michele were sailing into. But would that have been enough to change anything?

“So,” Christophe said, “you two knew that thing was out here all along, yet you let me think it was bloody _pirates_ you were chasing. Like some kind of fool.”

 _That wasn't what I said at all_ , Georgi wanted to protest, though it seemed Christophe had a better grasp of the truth than Georgi would have liked. But a pitiful mewing coming from underneath some strewn clothes and overturned chests saved Georgi from having to respond.

Christophe hurried over to the sound and uncovered a cowering Choupette. “ _Ma ch_ _é_ _rie,_ you're alive. . . .”

But how many more had been lost tonight? And among them, it finally occurred to Georgi, Josef Karpisek, who had been aboard the _Overreach_ when she went under. Josef who had been Christophe's most constant companion since Christophe was fourteen years old. Georgi could only begin to imagine how he must feel. If something so horrific were to happen to Yakov, before Georgi's eyes, and he was unable to do anything about it. . . .

Georgi couldn't fault Christophe his anger. He wanted to reach out to the captain, to comfort him. To show he understood.

But the stony set of Christophe's face when he turned, the cat clutched over his heart, told Georgi he'd better not try.

“Will that thing come back? You don't suppose the explosion killed it.”

Georgi lowered his gaze. “I . . . I don't know. I'd be surprised if it were dead.” 

“And if it isn't, it doesn't matter where we go. We're at its mercy, if it chooses to pursue us.”

Christophe swore as he paced the cabin, grasping for a solution to their predicament. But where could they flee from an enemy whose domain was the entire ocean? And what could possibly harm it? Their harpoons and cannonballs had only served to antagonize the squid.

“It was looking for you, wasn't it?”

Georgi bit his tongue, but he could not hide his guilt from the captain.

“That's what Michele meant when he said 'it found us'.” Christophe's words pierced like the point of a sword, held to Georgi's chest. “It found _you._ The two of you.”

It seemed to Georgi that Christophe already understood the situation well enough. He couldn't deny it. “I don't know what you want me to say—”

“How is that even possible?”

“I don't know! Alright? I don't know how it found us, I don't know how it knew we were after it, but somehow it seems it did. Clearly we underestimated its intelligence.” Even now, Georgi shuddered to think what sort of mind rested behind that enormous eye. One as self-aware as he was, and as full of wants and needs. And memories of those who had wronged it, no doubt.

“And as a result of your negligence,” Christophe said, “good men died tonight.” It was his calm that frightened Georgi now, as he put the cat down on top of the bed.

 _Even if I'd told you everything,_ Georgi wanted to say,  _what good would that have done?_

He already knew the answer to that. With proper forewarning, they could have mounted a better defense, or at least posted a lookout who would have known what to watch for, who could have seen the squid coming from farther off. And if not that, still— _you could have used your light to save them_ , Georgi's guilty conscience accused him.  _What little of it you have._

Only it was Michele Georgi had chosen to save with his magic, and Michele alone.

If Michele had just let that accursed blade fall into the sea, maybe Georgi could have . . .

But Michele hadn't, and Georgi hadn't, and there was no way to turn back time and try all over again. So of what use were ifs and maybes?

When Georgi could offer no more defense, Christophe sighed, and passed a hand over his face. “You have until first light to collect your things. Then I want the two of you off my ship.”

“You can't be serious—”

But Christophe seized Georgi and pulled him close, pinning Georgi's arms to his side, and Georgi could feel just how serious he was. The threat of violence in Christophe's grip startled him, and he struggled momentarily against it on instinct.

It was the fondness in Christophe's eyes, however, and the regret, that made Georgi still just as quickly. Even now, it seemed, Georgi posed a temptation to him, like wine placed before a drunkard. Even now, years and leagues distant, Christophe was thinking of his faerie prince.

And maybe, it occurred to Georgi, that was the only thing still working in his and Michele's favor.

“I think I'm being more than fair,” Christophe said by Georgi's ear, his loss and his anger at being played for a fool all that kept him from pressing his mouth closer to Georgi's hair and skin. “I'm not a monster, I'll give you a fighting chance. A week's worth of provisions—”

“Two,” Georgi said, his heart hammering in his chest. One week would be too little. “Two weeks' worth, and I'll make sure Michele comes along peaceably.”

It was a promise Georgi wasn't sure he should make, let alone one he could be expected to keep. But Christophe must have understood that his remaining men, eager for someone to blame, might still have the stomach for more bloodshed, if that someone were rash enough to offer them occasion.

“Two weeks, then,” he said with finality. “I wish things could have been different between us, Georgi, but I have to protect what I have left. You understand that, don't you?”

If Christophe was looking for absolution from Georgi, he didn't need to ask. Georgi knew the deal he was getting was better than being thrown overboard, either alive or with a throwing dagger in his gut. He didn't doubt Guanghong and the _Supplanter_ 's crew would do what Christophe hesitated to, after what they had suffered tonight, if given half a reason.

Convincing Michele to see the same sense, however, was going to be a challenge.

* * *

“You're making a grave mistake,” Michele railed as the last of their baggage was dumped unceremoniously into the dinghy. “When we get back to civilization, I'll see you hanged for this treachery!”

Christophe laughed at that, though without any humor. “First you have to make it back to civilization, _non_?”

“This is cruel and unusual treatment—and you're in breach of contract!”

“And I will happily dispute the details with you in a court of law, _if_ I ever see you again. I'm sure the king will see things my way, however, when I tell him you and Monsieur Georgi were on the other ship when it went down, presumed lost at sea.”

There was a rumbling of assent from the crew. So Michele and Georgi could expect no clemency from them either.

“The thing is, Sir Michele,” Christophe said, “with that beast swimming around out there, we'll all be lucky if we make it back to port in one piece. And I have a gnawing suspicion my chances will improve the farther I get myself from the two of you.”

Outrage darkening his face, Michele reached for his sword.

But the captain was faster, his pistol already in hand. All he had to do was raise it and Michele's hand stilled at his hip.

“Now,” Christophe purred, eyes narrowing behind the pistol's hammer, “do you really want to test my generosity?”

“Get in the boat, Michele,” Georgi said at his back.

“Be a smart lad and listen to your friend.”

Then there was nothing Michele could say or do now to change the captain's mind. If Georgi's earlier appeal had failed, Michele had no choice but to climb into the dinghy, while he was still allowed the dignity of doing it himself. To stand there daring Christophe to shoot him was only hastening the inevitable.

It wasn't that Michele didn't understand the captain's anger. Only a handful of survivors had been recovered from the _Overreach_ , and they were those who had abandoned her the moment the squid attacked. Of those who went down with her, not even bodies had surfaced.

But surely even in his grief Christophe had the humanity left in him to understand what he was consigning Michele to. As the crew lowered the little wooden boat to the surface, it felt to Michele like he and Georgi were being lowered to the water in their own coffin. The ink that still painted the ship's side and bled into her wake seemed to him like a funeral shroud in the first light of morning. Perhaps he and Georgi had escaped Death last night, but it would come for them today or tomorrow, from out of the darkness below.

If not a week or two from now, when they ran out of drinking water.

Or in a month, when the last of them finally succumbed to hunger and the elements. It was enough to drive a man half-mad just thinking about it.

* * *

They must have drifted for days. Michele kept losing count, but Georgi kept reminding him. They all seemed to blur together: taking turns rowing and navigating, sleeping, eating, sleeping some more. Conserving their strength.

They had their maps, at least, and a sextant and compass, and their knowledge of the stars—which were their only other company in the nighttime, Georgi's balalaika having disappeared in the confusion after the squid attack. With some idea as to where they were going, it would not have been fair to say they were lost. But looking out at the endless water in either direction, it was hard to have hope.

That beast, that giant squid, was still out there somewhere. Neither could believe it had perished in the explosion that took Leo and Josef. There was no telling if or when it might resurface, and decide to finish the business with them it had begun.

At night, Michele's sleep was disturbed by lights flashing beneath the waves, throwing queer scintillations up out of the water, like sunlight refracting through a spinning crystal. And the shadow of suckered arms, rising out of the abyss to blot out the stars with their elegant, lethal ballet. Arcing up over their boat, as if to embrace Michele from behind—

He'd wake with a jolt, rocking the boat. Grasping frantically for his sword. Across from him, Georgi would crack a worried eye.

“Just a dream,” Michele reassured him, and tried to reassure himself. “Go back to sleep.” And he would lie there in the dark with Serenade clutched to his chest, under those distant, mocking stars, utterly exhausted but too frightened to shut his eyes. Just watching the moon up above grow fuller and fuller.

While his stomach grew emptier and emptier.

“We should have sighted land by now,” Georgi told him on the fourth day. As if the news that they were failing ought to cheer Michele up. “We must be going in circles. We couldn't have been that far off course when Christophe dropped us off.”

 _Dropped us off?_ Michele thought Georgi did give their deserter too much credit.

“Here. Eat your breakfast.”

A square of hard tack each and a couple swigs of water had to get them through the whole day. It was only until they made landfall, then they could scrounge for better fare—or buy it, if they were lucky and landed near a settlement. Tasteless as the tack was, it was never enough to satisfy Michele's stomach, which protested as loudly and often as it could.

“I don't suppose you could magic these to taste like pheasant or boar,” Michele said as he contemplated his next bite.

“Maybe. But wouldn't I first have to know what those taste like?”

Even having known him for years, Michele often forgot that Georgi was a strict vegetarian.

Then, after giving Michele's question some thought: “Though I suppose I could jinx you to taste borsht when you take a bite—or pickled cabbage piroshki,” Georgi said with some degree of longing. “That is, if I can even remember the flavor myself.”

“Why don't you eat meat?” Michele had always wanted to ask, and since there was nothing else to distract him from the question: “I mean, I gathered it's something no faerie wants to do, but . . .”

“But why?” Georgi smiled, as Michele remembered adults doing when he was a boy, and all his most important questions were silly to them.

But there was nothing silly about Georgi's answer. “There's always a price for taking the life of another creature, even if only to feed yourself. It's a price most fae can't stomach to pay. It leaves a . . . stain, on a person's soul, that can't easily be washed away. If it can be at all.”

His words made Michele itch, as if he could feel tiny worms crawling beneath his skin, just waiting for him to draw his last breath to start decomposing his flesh.

He shook himself of the suggestion. “You never mentioned this to me before. Is it something you can see?”

“We can smell it. It isn't a pleasant smell to us.”

_In other words, I must stink to you. A stinking, stained human. No matter how much I bathe, that's what I'll always be to you._

“There are exceptions,” Georgi said, noting Michele's chagrin. “If a creature willingly gives its own flesh to save others. Say, on a lifeboat of starving sailors.”

“So  _cannibalism_ is alright with faeries?” And Georgi thought _humans_ were the filthy, sin-ridden ones?

“If one gives up their life out of love. But that's an extreme case, for extreme circumstances. It doesn't happen very often.” Georgi grinned—as if flashing his teeth after that comment would set Michele's mind at ease now. “Don't worry. We're a long way from having to consider that scenario.”

“Would you really eat me before you ate a fish?”

Georgi laughed at that, but he didn't answer. No doubt trying to lighten the mood. But Michele wasn't in the mood to have his mood lightened.

“But you're saying I should repent after every meal—”

“It wouldn't hurt.”

Michele had said so half in jest, and he regretted it as soon as Georgi answered. Old familiar guilt wrapped its smothering arms about his shoulders, perfumed with resentment. “You didn't have to answer so quickly. I guess I'll just have to add liking the taste of meat to my list of things to ask God's forgiveness for.”

It wasn't a long list by any means, but the sins upon it were heavy.

“It's my fault we're lost out here,” Michele said when he could bear the weight of them alone no longer. Hell, the squid was probably his fault, too. Sent by God, like one of His avenging angels, to punish Michele for the thoughts that he refused to recant. “I think I'm cursed, Georgi, for wanting what I ought to know I cannot have. Or, rather, _whom_ I shouldn't have. I love . . . unnaturally.”

“If you mean Sara, I know you love her.”

“I don't think you understand.” Now that he had started his confession, Michele refused to be stopped. He had to say it, to tell another living soul. It was as if something inside him knew his time to unburden himself was running out. “It's the _way_ I love her that's wrong, Georgi. It's not the way a brother should love his sister.”

“I know.”

That with such patience and understanding Michele was taken aback. He had expected disgust, condemnation, not this. “You do?” How long had Georgi known? “Is it that obvious? Does everyone know—does  _Sara_ know?”

“I can't say. But it was clear to me. I saw it in your eyes, heard it in your voice, when you stared after her, spoke her name to others. I recognized myself in you,” Georgi said to Michele's eyes. “The telltale signs of lost love. Only, I suppose, in your case it's more . . . love without hope of ever being returned.”

Michele swallowed hard, only then feeling the emotion welling in his throat. He turned his head away, unable to hold Georgi's stare, though he wished he had the courage to. The tenderness in it made Michele feel like perhaps he wasn't the terrible person he knew he was.

His voice was small when he spoke. “You don't condemn me? You don't think I'm disgusting for loving her the way I do?” He didn't deserve this kindness, this mercy. But he was grateful to have it.

“No,” Georgi said. “Why would I condemn you for your love?”

 _Because anyone else would_ , Michele wanted to shout back at him. _Because everyone else knows it's unnatural, and a mortal sin._ “Because she's my _sister._ My own sister. We shared the same womb, for God's sake. Unless you're going to tell me incest is common among the fair folk, too.” _If it is, then pity Sara and I weren't born fae,_ Michele thought bitterly _._

Georgi didn't answer that question. “Love is a gift. And a burden. It's up to every man to love the way he feels in his heart is right. No-one else can take that from him. The important thing is that we know love's joy and its pain, if only once in our lives. I would never judge you for loving, Mishka. What a hypocrite I would be if I did.”

But Michele knew better than to take hope from Georgi's words. When all this was over and they returned to civilization— _if_ they returned—nothing would really change. Michele had volunteered for this quest, begged for the honor, in some desperate childish hope that, like the princess in a faerie story, Sara's heart would magically change toward him once he had returned, victorious, all enemies slain, all spells lifted.

What an idiot he had been. What an idiot he would be still, when he finally starved to death with Georgi in this boat.

Suddenly, Georgi shot to his feet.

“What is it?” Michele spun around, heart galloping in his chest as he gripped the sides of the boat. “ _Is it back?_ ”

“Land.”

Georgi sounded as though even he couldn't believe it. He fumbled for the spyglass, while Michele squinted at the horizon. He _thought_ he saw something there, pale and jutting like a golden iceberg in the haze, but couldn't be sure it wasn't just his wishful thinking.

Then Georgi laughed. And whooped, and laughed some more. “It's Eros!” he told Michele. “And Agape right behind it.”

“Alright, alright! Sit down, you buffoon, save the celebratory jig for shore.” Then a sobering thought occurred to him. “Tonight's the full moon. If we want to make it to that cove—”

“I know.” Georgi grinned like a maniac. “We'd better start rowing.”

* * *

Sara came to him that night in place of the lights, sliding under Michele's covers as she'd done when they were children and she'd had a frightening dream.

Only now she was grown, a woman in full bloom, and her thin shift did nothing to disguise the press of her breasts and the heat of her hollows against him. She kissed his cheek, as tender as she'd always done, but Michele could feel her nipples digging like eager kitten noses into the side of his chest.

He reached for her—but he couldn't touch her. He wanted to trace her curves with his own hands, wrap his arms around her waist and pull her to him. He wanted that so badly he nearly cried out in distress when he couldn't.

She knew his trouble precisely and laughed at him, deep in her throat. And shushed him, and laced her fingers through his, pressing his hands down into his pillow.

“Cup your hands around mine,” she whispered, “like so,” and even if her voice didn't sound exactly right, Michele didn't care. Beneath the curtain of her hair, spilling like a veil all around them, he no longer felt ashamed by how hard he was with want for her. That raven-dark hair could shield him even from the gaze of God as Sara climbed on top of him, her shift bunching between their bodies, her slit warm and damp against his sex.

And as snug around him as his own hand when she eased herself down onto him. Michele could smell the musk of her desire in the space between them. How could he ever be ashamed of wanting this? They were perfect this way, everything they were ever meant to be. One single heart divided at birth, reunited by the sheathing of flesh in flesh. She squeezed his cock between her walls, a whimper escaping her throat, and it was torture to him that he could not touch her with his own hands.

She bent to kiss him again. Whispered in his ear: “Grab on to me.”

 _I can't,_ he thought in desperation _._ But even so he felt himself obeying the command, hands smoothing over a thicker waist, tracing over hard muscles that bunched and relaxed all the way up to wide, solid shoulders.

“Don't let go,” Georgi said within that veil of raven-dark hair. And as excitement surged behind his navel, Michele wanted to swear to him, _I won't, I won't._

He rolled Georgi onto his back and sank down between his thighs, hands slipping through hair like spilled ink. Georgi sighed long and low when Michele slid into him, hissing and rising like a wave to meet Michele's next thrust.

All too soon Michele was tripping over the edge, his orgasm hooking him like a fish on a line and pulling him fast to the surface, to consciousness. He woke to the cold floor of the cave, nothing but the deep throbbing in his loins and spent seed in his trousers to remind him of his dream.

Shame—dependable old shame—quickly flooded in to fill the void. It wasn't the first time Michele's dreams had brought Georgi to him, but it was one thing to be awoken like that in the privacy of one's own bed. If Michele had called out in his sleep—and if Georgi had happened to look over the moment Michele came . . .

When Michele glanced over at his pallet, however, Georgi was still sound asleep. His hair still shorn short, as it had always been as long as Michele knew him. There was just enough dim light to see so by. The sun must not even be up on the horizon yet.

Which meant, if he was quick and very sneaky, Michele had just enough time to make it down to the water and wash his soiled pants before Georgi woke. If asked, Michele could always say he wanted to get an early start on laundry. Even if Georgi could guess the gist of his trouble, surely he would be polite enough to say nothing of it.

At the water's edge, Michele peeled off his clothes and waded out to mid-thigh, washing the last evidence of the dream from his skin before tying a length of dry linen around himself for a loincloth. The morning sun was starting to crest over the cliff at the other side of the cove, warming the shallows to a bright turquoise blue for Michele to do his washing by.

But when he happened to look up and a little further out into the water, he forgot all about his laundry. All he could do was stop and stare.

Then, shaking himself, he ran as fast as he dared over the slippery rocks back to camp, and shook Georgi awake.

Michele must have been quite a sight to see, judging by Georgi's expression. Squatting there in his loincloth, legs dripping seawater all over Georgi's blanket, and a craze in his eyes.

Georgi snapped upright. “What is it? Everything alright?”

“Come quick,” Michele urged him, grinning ear-to-ear as he headed back to the water. “Hurry, hurry, hurry! I need you to tell me if you see it too, or if I'm just so hungry I'm actually starting to lose my mind.”

It was still there, right where Michele had left it. A huge skipjack, half as long as they were tall, all alone, and drifting aimlessly in the shallows as if it were searching for something.

It had to be a hallucination. It was too good to be true.

But Georgi assured Michele as he, too, stared at the fish, “Well, you're not losing your mind.”

“Is it not the most beautiful thing you've ever seen?” Michele said. He couldn't stop smiling. “What do you suppose it's doing here? Is there something wrong with it?”

“Who cares? What are you waiting for? It to swim away?”

Georgi's words hit him like the breaking of a spell. Michele made a mad dash for the makeshift spear he had left on the rocks, and, brandishing it high, splashed back out toward the fish. In hindsight, the commotion should have been more than enough to scare it away and back to deeper waters.

But it didn't swim away. And when Michele thrust his spear down into it, he could have sworn that the fish rose to meet his point, impaling itself further to hasten its own death.

Michele wasn't one to second-guess a meal of fresh meat. Not having gone without for so long. They wasted no time cleaning and butchering the fish, setting the offal aside for use as bait, eating the best parts raw while the rest was sliced and skewered for smoking.

Michele wasn't surprised that Georgi tucked into the meat as eagerly as he did, but it did pique his curiosity. As they ate by the morning sunlight, Michele asked him, “What about that price you said you didn't want to pay? Taking a life for food?”

“This might sound strange,” Georgi told him, “but the moment I laid eyes on that fish, it felt like the price had already been paid. And not by us.”

Georgi said it like even he didn't quite know what it meant, and that bothered him.

All Michele knew was that his belly felt full and contented again, there was meat enough to last several more days, and he didn't want to question their good fortune.


	4. The Curse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It seemed they were not going to starve after all.

A few days after the skipjack came the rockfish.

Then the coconuts, floating into the cave as if on a mission. Michele and Georgi cracked them open right there on the shore, savoring the juice inside as if it were the finest reserve of brandy.

The next day, when taking the boat out into the cove, Michele found a cache of mussels and oysters hidden among the rocky alcoves. Along with more seaweed. It seemed they were not going to starve after all. The currents, they determined, must have changed, bringing with them a surge of new life.

With the currents came a change in Michele's mood. Gathering and preserving their food stores gave him something to do to feel useful, since they had determined there was no threat within the island's caves that necessitated carrying a sword.

Georgi was content to spend most days exploring the caverns on his own, saving Michele's company for the tricky flooded sections or sharp inclines where a second person did more than just set one's mind at ease. Michele could dive deeper than Georgi, and, aided by Georgi's simple enchantments, could stay down longer as well, confirming whether flooded sections continued on or were dead ends. He could help secure ropes and makeshift ladders to steep slopes so that Georgi could return to those sections later on his own.

They had to help each other, as there was no way either one of them could finish this mission alone. That Georgi felt keenly as he sat by the evening fire across from Michele, sketching out tunnels in his notebook.

Sometimes it was Michele Georgi sketched these days, in the margins, as more and more tunnels reached their ends without any sign of the Heart. The proud nobility of his profile, the weight of responsibility a mere shadow over his young face. It always startled Georgi when he looked back at his work to see how beautiful the Michele in those pages was, though he would say the real thing was more so.

They showed his bias, Georgi determined. Yes, that must have been it. He had been reaching for that inner light for so long without success, he had unconsciously been engraving his most closely guarded feelings into the paper. He needed a new hobby.

“Tell me about Anya.”

Georgi looked up with a start, as if Michele had suddenly shot an arrow at him. And only just missed. “Excuse me?”

Michele's shrug was far too casual for his words. “You know all about Sara, but I never hear you say a word about Anya.”

“What do you mean? I mention her all the time.”

“By name, sure, but not what kind of person she was. Or _is,_ I suppose, but _was_ when you knew her. I want to know what it was that made you fall for her. How you won her heart the first time. What it was like to play in her court.”

“Those are,” Georgi knit his brow, “painful memories, Michele.”

“Of course they are. When you bottle them up like a secret. The more you keep them to yourself, the more painful they'll be. _I_ should know.”

 _But you don't,_ Georgi thought. _You haven't a clue. You think your puppy-lust for Sara is True Love, but you wouldn't recognize the cur if it bit you._

“For God's sake, Georgi,” Michele laughed, “this woman is the love of your life and you never even told me what she looks like.”

How could Georgi tell him? When just to recall Anya's face in his mind was an exercise in mourning what he'd lost, and by his own failing. The most precious thing Georgi had ever owned, and he had let her slip away.

But then, that had been Georgi's mistake precisely, letting himself believe he had ever owned her. _Could_ ever own her _._ All Anya had ever left Georgi that were his to own were memories of their time together.

Now all he wanted was to keep those memories pure inside his heart. The only way to do that was to lock them in a box and seal it shut, never open it again. Never hold those precious moments to the light. Where their colors could fade, their feelings warp until they were no longer true.

“You're not worried I'm going to taint her somehow by thinking about her, are you?” Michele said, as if reading Georgi's mind for once.

“No,” he confessed. “I'm worried _I_ will.” At least when Georgi dreamed about her, he had no control over the images that played across his mind like shadows across a sheet. The Anya of his dreams, he could at least tell himself, was just a facsimile, conjured by his own longing. Not the real thing.

But Georgi resented Michele's tone. As if he believed he were somehow entitled to Georgi's past.

Not that that should come as any surprise. Michele was only human. And here Georgi had done him the courtesy of drawing him so beautifully.

“Someday I'll tell you everything you want to know,” Georgi said. “I'm just not ready for that day to be today.”

* * *

Georgi was too deep into his cups to notice them entering the inn.

Oh, perhaps in the back of his mind he registered the familiar voices, the quiet footsteps, the sweet scent of home. But he was too busy replaying those final moments with Anya to spare a worry for himself, and the state in which they would find him. All he wanted was to be left alone with the past.

Until they left him no choice but to face the present.

“So,” Yakov's voice boomed beside Georgi's bench, “this is where you've been hiding yourself. And, now I see, with good reason. Look at you, Georgi, you're an absolute mess!”

He wasn't exactly a vision himself. Yakov might have been able to hide his long hair and pointed ears under a floppy-brimmed hat, but he had so little knowledge of human fashion that his outdated choice of long coat and even longer scarf undid his other attempts to blend in.

“ _Ohhf!_ ” Mila, his protégé, covered her nose, waving her other hand to clear the air before her face. “He stinks like a human.”

“Remember that stench well, Mila. It's the stench of fear.” Yakov regarded the half-eaten capon carcasses in front of Georgi with a grunt of disgust. “He's fouled himself, eating flesh—and with intention, no doubt. To punish himself, and me—”

That was when he noticed Georgi's shorn head.

Eyes nearly bulging out of his skull, Yakov pushed it backwards and forwards and side to side in disbelief, as if in doing so he might eventually find what was missing. But no such luck. “ _What have you done with your hair?!_ ”

“Sold it.” Georgi covered a belch with the back of his hand. “How do you think I paid for the chickens?” Somehow he managed a boozy smile. Though their faces wouldn't stay still when he looked up at them. “Hello, Yakov. Mila, always a pleasure.”

Mila looked like she was going to be sick.

But it was the vein in Yakov's forehead throbbing bigger and bigger the redder his face became that captured Georgi's inebriated attention, and made it hard to listen all that closely to the rant that ensued.

Georgi knew what the gist of it would be. A version of the same lecture his teacher had given him as a student. Or as a newly-crowned favorite of the Queen. That he wasn't living up to his full potential, pretending to be some version of himself he was not nor would ever be. That he was squandering his talent on vapid romances. That he did his teachers' reputations a disservice with all his nonsense about being in the thrall of Love Eternal, as if love were some chronic, incurable malady.

Georgi had heard it all before in infinite variation. Just because what he'd done this time was actually deserving of Yakov's bile didn't mean he expected to hear anything new.

He managed to tune back in around this part: “Thank Goodness Lilia isn't here to witness the abyss you've sunk yourself into this time. It would shave a century off her life to see what's become of her brightest pupil.”

“Her most _obedient_ , Yakov,” Georgi mumbled drunkenly. “Let's get that part right. We both know I was never her brightest. Not that it makes a wick of difference either way. The brightest pupil burns twice as quick—isn't that how the saying goes?—and is soon tossed aside when he's no longer _exciting_ or  _brave_ or  _rugged_ enough to satisfy my lady's appetites. . . .”

The last was barely intelligible through a burbly sob. To clear his throat and drown his tears, Georgi tipped his tankard back for a gulp of ale, but there was only enough left at the bottom to qualify as a sip. “Mari~” he warbled, “my cup thirsts~”

“Now, now,” Yakov tried to take it from him, “you've had more than enough of that. Have you no shame, Georgi? Look what you've done to yourself.”

But Georgi wormed out of his hold and slammed the empty tankard on the table.

“What  _I've_ done?” he spat, feeling all his pain swell within him, filling him with new strength. “ _She's_ the one who did this to me! She _made_ me like this! Anya was my _sun_! But like a comet drawn to her life-giving light, she has burned up everything that was ever good in me and thrown this empty vessel into outer darkness! I should write that down—”

“I think you should _lie_ down,” Yakov suggested, narrowly avoiding the swing of that tankard.

The door creaked open and a young blond faerie poked his hooded head into the establishment. Until now, the innkeeper's daughter had managed to be equally unimpressed by everyone and everything that came through her door, including Georgi's latest spectacle. But just one glance at the youth's face, and she blushed and could not wipe the silly, awestruck grin off her own.

“Done already, Yuri?” Yakov shouted at him from across the dining hall. “You couldn't possibly have seen the horses fed and watered that fast.”

“The stableboy can do it,” the youth grumbled back, raising his nose in the air like a spoiled prince. “What'd'you think it is they're paid for?”

“ _And?_ Did you pay him?”

Yuri chafed under the reprimand, but he couldn't argue with his elders. Least of all when Yakov was right. He went out again with a sullen “Tch!” and slammed the door shut behind him.

“Now, then,” Yakov said once Yuri was gone. “What to do with you, Gosha.”

“Just go,” Georgi muttered into his hands, “and leave me to my peace.”

“Peace!” That was one of the last words Yakov would have chosen to describe Georgi's sad state. “I promised Lilia I would bring you back in one piece, but—” With heavy heart and heavy sigh, he laid a fatherly hand on Georgi's shorn head. “I see that's no longer possible.”

Georgi laughed at the bitter truth of that. “You're right. As always, Yakov, you know me better than anyone. I shall never sing again. She has stolen all my songs, along with my heart. She has broken me in ways that can never be mended. And for that I curse her.”

“You don't really mean that—”

“But I do.” It curled up out of the void Anya had left in Georgi's core, the black anger. Salving the sting of his wounds with its sticky tar. “I curse her, Yakov—”

“Leave me out of it!”

“—to a life of loneliness and regret. May her hair fall out and her lips wither like fruit left on the branch,” Georgi said through his teeth. “May her beauty become the bane to her that it was to me, netting her nothing but misery. May she never know love—

“No.” He stood as it occurred to him, in a flash. “May she know it in its entirety, only to have it _ripped_ away from her in her moment of greatest happiness and leave her  _floundering_ in the ocean of her grief! Though she may laugh, may she never feel the joy of it upon her lips. Though she may feel a lover's hand upon her flesh, may she never again know the warmth of its touch.”

Mila gasped at his cruelty, but Georgi barely heard her.

He was really getting into it now, gesturing with his hands for good measure. Rarely had he felt so inspired. The words just flowed from him, as easily as water. “May the sun turn its gaze from her until she is as cold through and through as her heart of ice! _That_ is the fate I curse her with, as _she_ has cursed _me_! Until she comes to me herself, Yakov, begging for my forgiveness, let her pass her days a hollow shell of what she used to be!”

Only when every last word was out did it hit Georgi, and he clasped his hands over his mouth. Lest anything even more damning have a chance to escape.

“What have I done?” He grasped at his old teacher's sleeve. “Anya, forgive me, I didn't mean any of it!”

“You're drunk and don't know what you're saying,” Yakov said as he tried to free himself. “I'm sure your words will get lost and give up long before they can reach Anya. At least we can pray they will.”

“But I have wished on her what I wouldn't on my worst enemy!” How could he be so stupid, so selfish? Grief had taken away his sense, was all Georgi could think in his own defense. Or rather, his senses had left him the moment Anya had retracted her affections.

Gods, he loved her still! He had to do something, and fast, to make amends for his words.

But all the ale Georgi had drunk had other ideas, and when he stumbled back against the bench, he could not catch himself before he tumbled over it and onto the floor.

He began to laugh at himself, but it soon turned to sobs, then tears. _It's myself I ought to curse,_ he thought, _if I weren't so sure I was damned already._ And he felt himself treading the brink of madness. If this ache where his heart used to be did not cease, he feared he would plunge headlong over the edge.

“Well, now's as good a chance as we're going to get,” Yakov huffed. He hooked an arm under Georgi's, hoisting him as best as he was able off the fallen bench and back to his feet. “Mila, get his other side. I don't care how bad he smells.

“You, maid,” Yakov said in the common tongue to the innkeeper's daughter, who was making her rounds among the other guests, filling cups and clearing plates. “I assume this man has a bed here.”

“It's alright, Mari,” Georgi said to her blank look. “Yakov's an old friend. He's come to rescue me. Just like a prince in a story.”

“If you say so.” Mari shrugged indifferently at Georgi's sarcasm and bid the three to follow her. Even if Yakov and Mila had come all this way specifically to beat Georgi and rob him blind, no doubt she would have led the whole party back to his room with the same level of complete unconcern.

The only time Mari seemed at all interested in them or their business was when she asked if the golden-haired boy who was out tending to the horses needed a room and hot meal, or anything else she could provide to make him comfortable through the night.

* * *

Georgi woke to a splitting headache and a room that would not stop spinning, no matter how he tried to hold his throbbing head still. His eyes burned when he opened them, and were surely red from crying.

Then his stomach reminded him he had filled it to the brim with alcohol and animal flesh and he bent over, fumbling for the chamber pot beside his bed before it could all come pouring back up out of him.

“ _Hughhh_.” His companion made a gagging sound, the sound of someone trying not to wretch in sympathy. “The old man's not paying me enough to sit and watch this shit parade.”

It was the blond youth from earlier, the impertinent one. Georgi was sure he had seen the boy before, his flaxen hair braided tightly against his skull rather than loose around his face, as it lay now. Georgi wouldn't easily forget that icy stare. But Lilia's stable was a crowded one at his age.

“I know you,” Georgi said to him. And, just to mess with the boy a little: “Yuliy, is it?”

“ _Yuri_ ,” the boy shot back, as though Georgi had wounded him.

That brought a smile to Georgi's lips, despite his queasiness. He could remember being a prideful student at that age, too, and just as thin-skinned. It was one thing Yakov had always warned him against, one lesson Georgi could never seem to master. Only, rather than being quick to rise to anger, Georgi had always been too quick to fall for sentimentality. 

“I know who you are, too,” Yuri said. “Georgi, called Son of the Priest. The old man regaled me and Mila with your sad story all the way here. He told us you had it all. Renown, accolades, respect. You could have been the greatest in a century, but you threw it all away to be the Queen's whore.” Yuri scoffed at the thought. “And where did that get you, huh? Selling your parts for a couple of chickens and a shitty bed in a shitty flea-infested boarding house.”

“How old are you, Yuri?”

“Fifteen.” The boy grinned.

Georgi matched it. “And you have all this wisdom at such a tender age?”

It took a moment for Yuri to understand he was being mocked, by a drunkard no less, and his smile fell.

“You're just a sprout,” Georgi told him. “A sprout with a clumsy tongue, who thinks he can hide his slow wit behind shocking words. But what could a pup like you possibly know about the world? Hm? About love?”

Yuri turned his nose up at the word. “Who needs love when I can see what it's done to you?”

And Georgi smiled, though it pained him. Yuri was young. He could be forgiven for his ignorance. Perhaps, if he was lucky, he would never know the particular ache of a broken heart, would never know what it was like to wake each morning feeling like a ghost who hadn't yet realized he was dead.

Georgi sat up, and swung his legs over the side of the bed. With his stomach empty again, he felt a little better. Though the fire going strong in the hearth, no doubt meant to comfort him, made the room stifling. He was still in yesterday's—or were they today's?—clothes, and it was all Georgi could do to try and ignore the sour odor of ale and chicken fat on them. Even his own sweat smelled wrong.

To get his mind on other things, he asked Yuri, “What's your discipline?” Georgi's strengths had always been in playing and story-weaving. Put anything with strings in his hand and Georgi could make it sing sweet music. “Have you chosen an instrument?”

Yuri puffed up, like a young cock who's just learned he can crow. “My body's my instrument. I'm a dancer.”

“Ah.” Now so much made sense. “Victor was a dancer.” Though he played and wrote well enough to make a formidable rival. His poetry was never as emotive as Georgi's, but Victor's success had lain in how well he sold the act.

“Another shit-eating traitor to his race," Yuri spat at the mere mention of that name. "I won't disgrace my teachers like he did. Or like you, for that matter. I have greater respect for them than that.”

“And for yourself, Yuri? I seem to recall having to sit through your graceless gyrations on more than one occasion. A tomcat in heat has more finesse than what I saw. And good taste.”

“I give my audience something they can feel,” Yuri shot back. “Viscerally. Isn't that what we're all striving to do? Make people want to watch us and never look away? Isn't that what you were aiming for with Anya?”

“Make them feel with their loins,” Georgi told him, ignoring the jab no matter how true and deeply it had cut, “and that's all they'll ever feel for you. True artistry comes from what you can make them feel in their hearts. Hold a man or woman's heart in your hand and you don't even need glamour. That's what Victor understood. That's why he's still spoken of, not as a disgrace, but as a god.”

“I'll surpass him,” Yuri vowed, as much to himself as Georgi. “Yakov says I'm not to push my body's limits while it's still growing, but there are things I know already I can do that Victor never could. I'll become a legend in my own right, and in less time. When you hear folk speak of the Ice Tiger, you'll know they're talking about me.”

“They'll be calling you Lame Tiger if you don't stick to the regimen Lilia, in her vast wisdom and experience, has chosen for you.”

Yuri shut his mouth at Yakov's return, burrowing down into his hooded cloak and making himself smaller in the chair.

Watching him made Georgi nostalgic for the days he and Victor had been that young and surrendered by their families to Yakov's tutelage. All they'd wanted in those first few years was Yakov's approval—and he gave it so sparingly that it became a serious contest between the two of them to see who could garner more crooked smiles or grudging grunts of amusement. Georgi still found it difficult to forgive Victor for their rivalry, though he understood what drove Victor better than anyone.

It turned out Georgi didn't have to fight and backstab to win Yakov's affection. Yakov gave that freely to him, as a father would to a son—as lovingly and sternly as he put the bowl of cold leek soup into Georgi's hands now, and ordered him to eat.

The first spoonful nearly came back up, along with whatever was still left in Georgi's stomach. “Is this soup or an emetic?” he sputtered, struggling to keep it down.

“I mixed in some of my special cure,” Yakov said, with pride. “We'll have your body cleansed of all this human rot you've been filling it with in no time.”

The second spoonful was somehow even worse than the first. “Well, the flavors do not marry. In fact, I think they're undergoing a bitter divorce in my stomach as I speak.”

“Good. Then it's working.”

“Mari says this inn has a mineral hot spring out back,” Mila said as she placed a parcel of clean, folded clothes at the end of Georgi's bed. It didn't escape his notice how she held her breath when she had to come close to him. “You can bathe after you've completely sobered up. Otherwise, she says, the vapors will drag you off to Hell.”

“Whatever that means,” Yuri mumbled, and Mila shrugged. “Must be some human superstition.”

Right about now, however, Georgi would have welcomed the trip. _I am in Hell already,_ he thought. How could any place match the wretched emptiness he felt inside every waking moment of the day, no matter what he did to try and fill it again?

“You'll feel refreshed after a mineral bath,” Yakov agreed, patting Georgi's shoulder. “Then, once we get some _proper_ nutrition in you and you're fit enough to ride, you can accompany us back home. How does that sound?”

But Georgi was already shaking his head before Yakov could finish. “I'm not going back with you, Yakov. I can't.”

Yakov shot Mila a meaningful look, and she reached for Yuri's wrist. Yanking him from his chair despite protests and insults. “Ow! Hag! Don't you know your own strength?”

“Come on, Yuri. Why don't we avail ourselves of the amenities before Georgi mucks them up.” And Mila made it clear by her grip, if not her clenched jaw behind her smile, that she was not offering a choice.

“Fine! . . . but can we try not to run into the innkeeper's daughter along the way? The way she looks at me—”

Mila laughed. “Yuri, don't tell me you're afraid of a human girl!”

When their footsteps had faded down the hall and he and Georgi were alone, Yakov pulled the vacant chair closer to the bed and sat.

“This isn't the time for your theatrics, Gosha,” he said. His tone may have sounded tender, Georgi knew it to mean Yakov would suffer no bargaining nor backtalk whatsoever. “You'll ride home with us, and Queen Anya will find the grace to overlook your little lapse in judgment and welcome you back at court. Everyone will understand that you needed a little change of scenery, seeing as she was so dear to you. This, er, haircut of yours might take some time to blow over, but . . .”

He trailed off when Georgi looked as though he might start to cry again.

But no tears came. Georgi was completely wrung out of them.

“Anya's the reason I can't go back.” Even saying her name was like a stiletto jammed under the ribs. Georgi squeezed his eyes shut against the pain that nothing would relieve. “I can't bear to see her happy with anyone but me.”

“If you truly loved her, you wouldn't begrudge her happiness.”

“Can't I?” And what right did Yakov have to dictate what he could and could not feel? _If you truly loved her. . . . What nonsense. It's_ _because  _ _I love her that I can't stand it!_ “How would you feel if Lilia started parading around some new pet, petting him and cooing sweet nothings to him in front of you every opportunity she got? Would you smile and tell her how happy you were for her, and pretend as though each time you did, you weren't dying a little more inside?”

Yakov reddened. He and Lilia may have had their differences over the centuries, but his wife taking another lover was a thought he would not abide.

And yet: “Don't you see I'm trying to spare you unnecessary pain? This selfishness is unbecoming. Anya may be Queen, but she's just a woman—”

“Not to me. To me she was everything. To me she was life itself. _Is_ life itself.”

And that was the crux of it, Georgi thought as the poetic irony fell upon him like an executioner's axe. So beautiful and so tragic, he would add it to his repertoire if he weren't the subject and victim of it. “I can't go back there and sing my songs and pretend my heart is still my own, when she and I both know it beats in her hand, at her command and none other's.

“If you take me back to Anya, Yakov, I'll die. A man cannot live without his heart. And if grief doesn't finish me off fast enough, I'll kill myself.”

Yakov opened his mouth to refute Georgi, to force him to recant those words which hung between them too much like a curse. But he must have known it would be futile. And that Georgi was just theatrical enough to make good on his threat.

Resigning himself with a sigh through his nose, he slumped back in his chair. “What will you do?”

“Make my way in the world of men, I suppose,” Georgi said to his bowl of cold soup. “In Mont Royal there's an order of sworn brothers, who take a vow of chastity and devote themselves to higher learning.”

“It sounds like a cult.”

“It's a religious order.” Though, from the perspective of the fair folk, there wasn't much difference. “But this one accepts the teachings of natural philosophy and reason. They keep and maintain the royal library. I'd be surrounded by the greatest repository of human knowledge anywhere in the known world. Think of the songs in those pages that have lain forgotten for centuries.” Just the idea of it made Georgi's imagination soar, even if it could not move his heart. “The histories. . . . It was you who first recommended me for the oral histories, Yakov.”

“I remember,” his teacher said grudgingly.

“Then don't you think it's the perfect place for a son of a priest to hide from the world? I might even learn a thing or two.”

“If someone doesn't kidnap you and cut you up for your parts before you can get there.”

 _That old human tale?_ The older Georgi got, the more he was convinced those were just stories the fair folk told their children so they'd be too afraid to ever step foot outside their underground cities. “Victor managed just fine. I don't see why I shouldn't be able to do the same.”

And there it was, the very reason Yakov could not stand the thought of returning without Georgi. “You're not Victor,” Yakov said.

 _Don't make me give up both of you,_  was what Georgi heard, even if Yakov would not say it. _It was hard enough to lose one._ The letters and souvenirs Yakov received from Victor every few years or so were enough to reassure him his former student still thrived out there in the wider world, but they were a poor substitute for the real thing.

The difference was, Victor had left the faerie realm of his own choosing, out of curiosity and boredom, not self-imposed exile. And with his heart fully intact.

* * *

“We need to discuss our plans,” Georgi said over a quiet breakfast. “The full moon is less than a week away. We will need to decide before then whether we're going to leave or stay on Eros another month.”

Michele looked down at his paltry meal of dried fish wrapped in seaweed, and Georgi read all he needed from it.

“We have food now,” Georgi told him, “but there's no way to know if conditions will change after the full moon. If this cove turns back into the desert it was when we arrived, we won't have the provisions to last another month.”

“We could still starve to death,” Michele said.

“There is that chance, yes.”

It was clear enough by the somber look on Michele's face that he did not want to give up. He was not the type to bear the shame of surrender easily, let alone retreat. “How close are you to finding the Heart?”

Georgi sighed as he ran a hand over his hair. “I wish I knew. I've been over the caverns I can get to several times, and while I know there must be more out there to map, I can't help feeling that I'm missing something, some key piece of the puzzle that ought to be right in front of me. I know we're searching in the right place, the clues match what I remember from the journal—”

“What if someone already found the Heart years ago? That journal you keep mentioning, the one supposedly written by the sole survivor of his expedition. . . . What if he wasn't the only person to survive this place, just the only one who recorded his experiences? If I were some . . . some  _pirate_ , let's say, like that bastard Giacometti—”

“Privateer,” Georgi corrected him morosely.

“Whichever! I wouldn't want everyone to know if I'd found the Dark Heart of Carabosse. If I really wanted to hold on to it, I would take the secret to my grave.”

It wasn't as though similar thoughts had not occurred to Georgi before, but he shook his head stubbornly. “I know it's still here. It has to be.”

“And if it is not, we'll have wasted an entire month on this God-forsaken rock. A month that could have been better spent preparing a more effective plan of attack against that monster. In Napul.”

Georgi could have reminded Michele that he had been there, too. He had seen for himself how easily the giant squid pulled the _Overreach_ and all souls aboard her into the deep. But the Michele sitting across from him now was not the same Michele who had listened to Georgi's tale of a mythical weapon back in the safety of his castello, and believed whole-heartedly that it was their surest path to victory.

“I see what this is really about,” Georgi said with a wry grin. “You've never been away from your sister for so long before. You miss her.”

“Of course I miss her.” Michele narrowed his eyes at Georgi. “But I'm concerned as well. Clearly I've had no word regarding her well-being or our country's since we've been here. How am I to know if something's happened? I'm powerless as long as I'm here, Georgi—worse than powerless. If Sara has come under attack, not only can I do nothing to help her, I won't even know about it until I return. If I ever return, at this rate.”

“I'm sure she's fine. Napul has strong allies in Jean-Jacques and Isabella, and their rule is stable.”

But it was as if Michele had ceased to hear him. “I should never have left her. Without me there, at her side, who's to protect her from the scheming hyenas at court?”

Georgi rather thought Michele sold his sister short. She was more cunning at politics than Michele gave her credit for. To speak nothing of her dedicated captain of the guard.

He shrugged. “If you wish to leave, then let's leave. We can do nothing against the squid if we're both dead. We can plan our departure for the evening of the full moon.”

“What?” Michele started. “We can't abandon our mission now! Not when we could be just days away from finding that Heart!”

“You just said Sara would be better served by you being home,” Georgi reminded him.

“That's not what I said.” Never mind that it was. Michele sighed in frustration. “You're deliberately misconstruing my words.”

“On the contrary, Michele, I think they expressed the course of action you most want to take most accurately. Except I think you have it backwards. Sara doesn't need your help nearly as much as you need hers.”

A little voice in the back of Georgi's skull cautioned him against going further, but he was tired of always being Michele's first target of blame, whether he deserved it or not. “I should have known better than to think you'd be brave enough to come on this mission without her hand to hold yours when things got rough. If you'd spent more time planning with your brain instead of your cock, maybe we wouldn't be in the position we are now.”

Michele could not have looked more stunned if Georgi had just stabbed him in the gut. “You said you didn't condemn me for my love.”

“I don't. But there's a difference between condemnation and recognizing when one's efforts are in vain. You know it, too, if you would stop lying to yourself for one minute. Sara's never going to love you the way you love her.”

Michele snarled a curse into the darkness. “What would you know of it? When I return, triumphant, the monster slain—”

“What,” Georgi laughed, “you really think she'll be so grateful that she'll forget all the taboos of her upbringing and change her heart toward you, like magic? Throw herself into your arms and beg you to ravish her? Grow up, Michele, and open your eyes! Not only would your confession disgust her, her affections already belong to someone else and have for years.”

Michele shook his head, as if in doing so he might keep Georgi's words from entering his ears. “I don't believe you. She wouldn't do that to me—at least, she would have told me if that were true—”

“She must have made her move by now. Your departure was too perfect an opportunity not to take advantage of. When we return to Napul—assuming we ever do—I shouldn't be surprised to learn Emil Nekola has been named Lord of the City, by marriage.”

“No. He wouldn't betray me like that. I told him he was like a brother to me—”

“And you think that would stop him from confessing his devotion to Sara, when it's only barely stopped you? Only Emil isn't Sara's brother, Michele. And you've blinded yourself to what's been growing right in front of you all this time. You might have been able to deny it this long, but it'll be difficult to ignore when seven or eight months from now your dear sister pups a little brat with her complexion and Emil's eyes—”

“ _Shut up!_ ” Michele couldn't stand Georgi's taunting any more. He leaped to his feet, only his old fondness for the fae holding him back from planting his fist into the side of Georgi's face. “You dare to speak of my sister—your _Lady_ —in that vulgar manner, like she's some breeding mare!”

Georgi grinned, his eyes and teeth flashing inhumanly in the dark. “She's not _my_ Lady. Any more than you're my lord.”

“I won't be spoken to like this, least of all by the likes of you! You're no better off than I am, you . . . you _pariah_ , you _tramp—_ ”

“Ha! now you sound human! Care to add 'troglodyte' to that list? We fair folk just love to be called that one.”

But Michele just stood there and fumed. Georgi could all but hear his teeth grinding.

“What are you going to do, Michele?” he taunted. “Would you really raise your fists against me?”

“Don't tempt me, elf, I've been itching for a fight—”

“ _Shhh!_ ”

Suddenly Georgi went still as stone, listening for something in the distance.

Michele was instantly on alert as well, ears open for the sound of men—or any other creature—talking or moving, or even breathing. When the echoes of his outburst had died away they heard the knocking of wood against the rocks.

Boats! It had to be boats.

Georgi got up to investigate, but Michele grabbed his wrist. Put a finger to his lips to urge quiet, though Georgi was the last person Michele need have reminded. Michele reached for his sword, drew her as quickly as he dared from her scabbard, and, keeping to the cover of the rocks, led Georgi down to the water.

Even before they neared the water's edge they could see that it wasn't a boat knocking against the shore, but a wooden barrel.

Caution forgotten, Michele rushed out to it, hoisting the barrel up onto the rocks. Thankfully it still had its lid—and at least some of its contents, judging by the weight of it. He pried the lid open with a little help from Serenade, and laughed in relief at what was inside. “Apples!”

Georgi just about dropped to his knees and gave thanks to Michele's God at the news.

Michele tossed him one, and Georgi cradled it in both hands as he took a bite. “A bit mealy,” he said. But despite his words, the taste of fruit after so long without was to him like ambrosia.

There were more. They came trickling in throughout the day, which was spent sorting, drying, and unpacking the unexpected bounty.

Some barrels were empty and good for little more than firewood—but then, they could always use more firewood. Others contained salted fish or beef, or turnips, or wilted greens, beans or moldy onions, or more hard tack. There were small barrels of gun powder, wet.

And then the loose goods: clothing, wooden spoons, baskets, and a banged-up cooking pot that had somehow defied being sunk. Summer oranges. A stoppered jug with some wine left in it. Sodden maps and books that started to disintegrate at a touch. Even a mandore.

When Michele saw that, butting against the rocks off to one side, he had to present it to Georgi right away. One of the strings was snapped and tangled, the rose typically covering the sound hole lost, but otherwise it was in one piece. It was finely made, inlaid with precious hardwoods and mother-of-pearl—not an instrument anyone would toss away lightly. “It isn't a balalaika,” Michele said, “but . . .”

Georgi took the instrument from him with the same reverence Michele reserved for his Serenade, looking it over like he might a comrade in arms he had not seen in a very long time.

“It's playable,” he said. “I really only need a few strings to make her sing.”

“Maybe we can have a little song with our supper tonight,” Michele suggested, beaming in anticipation.

In answer, Georgi swung the instrument comfortably under his elbow and strummed a few chords. They may not have been in key, but to the two of them who had been without any accompaniment to the sound of their own voices for so long, it was the sweetest music in the world.

Taking that as an affirmative, Michele cupped his hands around his mouth and whooped, laughing when the cave mouth served his cry back to him like the howl of a wild thing. Whatever disagreement he had had with Georgi that morning, Michele wished it long forgotten. “Tonight we feast like kings!”

* * *

Calling it a king's feast was hyperbole to say the least, but it felt as near as to Michele and Georgi, after a month of living like ascetics. They set aside those provisions that would last the longest, using a little of the fish to season a stew of beans and what of the greens were still edible. Georgi wanted to add some of the wine to the mixture as well, but Michele was adamant that that was for drinking. Which he got started on forthwith.

They were still passing the jug between them while they waited for their apples to bake beside the fire.

“I don't think I've ever been so full,” Michele said.

Georgi reached for the mandore. “That's because your stomach has shrunk to the size of a bean.”

“Maybe.” A thought occurred to Michele, and he smiled like he had a naughty secret he was desperate to share. “That supper was only missing one thing. Cheese.”

Just the thought of it and Georgi's mouth began to water. He groaned in longing. “Now, why did you have to go and mention cheese when you know that's a weakness of mine? I won't be able to sleep now for thinking of cheese all night.”

“Creamy, salty, sinfully fatty cheese,” Michele said, but if he meant to tease Georgi, he wasn't doing himself any favors either. He threw himself back on his pallet with a lovelorn sigh, the backs of his fingers grazing his lips as if remembering the touch of a paramour's against them. “I'm telling you, I can almost taste it and it's driving me mad with desire!”

“ _I'm begging you not to/ Without cheese this mission seems hopeless,_ ” Georgi crooned as he strummed a few experimental bars. “ _How can I resist you/ When you leave my mouth feeling so blessed?_ ”

They both laughed at Georgi's change of lyrics, Michele turning away to hide the blush that bawdy song always brought to his cheeks without fail.

But it wasn't a tune well-suited to the mandore, so Georgi switched to something a little more melodic.

He had been fiddling with the instrument in his spare moments and felt he had its remaining strings tuned roughly to where his balalaika's had been. The sound was not exactly the same—in fact, Michele seemed to prefer the mandore's more rounded timbre—but it didn't take long before Georgi felt confident enough to play a song from beginning to end.

“You asked me about Anya,” he said.

But Michele, feeling generous with his belly full, tried to wave it off. “That's not necessary—”

“No, you were right,” Georgi told him. “It's only fair I tell you what she was like, when I knew her. I don't think I can do justice to those memories, or her beauty. Not in words. But perhaps I can give a sense of what she meant to me in those days, through music. If you'll be patient with me.”

It was an old familiar song that Georgi began to pluck from the strings, one that never failed to win him a melancholic smile from Anya's lips when he played it for her, though the music was slow as a dirge. A pavane, written for his princess. Whose love for him was long dead.

Perhaps it was the unspoken gravity of the piece that had touched Anya's heart, or the eerie melody. Lighter passages that recalled lazy afternoons picnicking in meadows, the laughter of friends, and stolen kisses in the dappled shade. But try to escape and the refrain pulled you back into its embrace like the arms of your lover, begging you never to forsake it, never forget it, though time would march on and night draw an end to the careless pleasures of day.

Georgi remembered how quiet Anya would fall when he played this song. How intently she had watched his fingers moving across the strings, with those imperious, heavy-lidded eyes he adored so much. As if to ask, _Is this how you see me? As something to mourn though I'm alive, now, in front of you?_

Looking back, it was as if Georgi had been playing his own requiem in that hallowed hall—a melody he hoped _she_ would remember _him_ by when he was no longer welcome there. When some other sweet, young, naively besotted musician sat at her feet and she caught some tenuous echo of that pavane in his song.

Close to a century had passed since the last time Georgi had played for her. Even with his keen memory, Anya slipped all too easily away from him again, melting into the shadows of the cave.

It was another woman who crossed his mind now—one Georgi could not picture because he had never seen her face. Not while she lived. He could only paint a picture of what she must have been like in his mind, based on the faces of her children, and the scars her sacrifice had left upon their hearts.

“Strange,” Michele said after a little while, “I don't know why, but something in that song made me think of my mother. And Seung-gil.”

Georgi lowered his eyes to the mandore, knowing it was foolish to feel envy toward a dead man.

“Not just him, either. The oranges that washed ashore? They're a variety we grow in Napul and export to other nations.”

“Then—”

“The shipwreck this all came from, more than likely it was one of ours.”

Georgi's hands stilled on the strings, and in the silence he could hear Michele breathing.

“How many more people have to die,” Michele hissed, “so that we may continue to live? What's the cost of keeping us alive in this God-forsaken place and how many more good men, just trying to live their lives and feed their families, have to pay it? Seung-gil didn't have to die like that. If he hadn't pushed me out of the way when he did, it would have been me that monster dragged down into the deep, and I wouldn't be sitting here with you right now.”

“I doubt in the moment Seung-gil was thinking that he was trading his life for yours,” Georgi said, trying to be helpful.

“That's what I mean,” said Michele. “He didn't choose that fate. None of them chose that fate. Don't think I don't appreciate that, if not for a split-second decision, I would be dead.”

“So what do we do? Cut our losses and go home, rethink our plan of attack?”

Michele's head snapped up. “No! I think it's imperative, more so than ever, that we stay and find the Heart of Carabosse, see this mission though to the end! We have the resources now to last us another month—resources men died for so that we might survive. They gave us this chance to keep going. I cannot allow their sacrifice to be in vain.

“I won't allow any of their sacrifices to be in vain,” he said with an inward look, and Georgi knew he meant Seung-gil, and Leo and Josef. “I won't rest until I have justice for all the souls that devil has stolen from this earth. I want revenge. I want to see it destroyed.”

“All I want,” Georgi said, “is for the killing to stop.”

“Then it seems we want the same thing.”

Of that, however, Georgi was not so certain.

“Then we stay one more month,” he said with a heavy nod.

“Do you think that's long enough to find the Heart?”

“It will have to be.”

* * *

The water called to Georgi.

Like a lover's hand it beckoned him: Come back to bed. Come sink yourself beneath these warm, wrinkled sheets, feel them cling to your naked body. Let them cover your head, hide you from the world, and breathe in their familiar scent. The scent of your beloved.

So he sank down, and let the water cover his head, and sheathe his naked body, and he swam.

Swam through the full moon light that lay heavy on the surface, shattering it, throwing glimmering shadows on the limestone that glowed like milky glass. Swam like he was a current himself, boneless and breathless, twisting effortlessly through each narrow passage in the rocks.

Swam for he didn't know how long. And when he surfaced, the stalactites twinkled down at him a greeting, and he smiled back, flashing spots of deep red and pale blue and metallic gold rapidly across his skin. Like a game he might have played as a child, mistaking fireflies in the distance for the faerie lights of his friends, sending him secret messages through the trees. He laughed at the absurdity and the simple joy of it.

Then wondered, What are fireflies? What are trees? What are friends? All he knew was down here. And he had been alone for as long as he could remember.

Gradually, very gradually, he realized he wasn't. Beneath the sound of distant waves crashing against the reef there was a heartbeat. Like his own, but oh, so very, very lonely. Dully thudding. Almost rumbling, like a crack opening deep in the earth where the light never reached and letting the heat through. Beckoning to him, like a greedy lover.

Wanting. Forever wanting. Insatiably wanting.

He wanted it. He wanted it so badly. Like he had never wanted another thing.

He had to have it. Compulsion overtook him; he could not deny it, nor did he want to.

He dove. Dove down, down, to the sandy bottom of the cave.

Where he saw it at once, half-buried in the moon-white sand: this dark heart, blood-blue, beating dully though it was a hunk of stone. It was just a hunk of stone, yet he had never beheld anything so bewitchingly beautiful in his life.

And it was that, only that, that made him hesitate. This moment would only come once, he knew: this moment when the heart was just a thing, self-contained, and belonging to no-one.

Just a moment, and then his hunger got the better of him. He reached for it—

(a thousand tendrils of darkness reached back)

—and woke with a gasp, his lungs burning as if they had been starved of air.

For a moment, Georgi panicked, unsure of where he was. Before the familiarity of the cave, illuminated by the light of the waning gibbous moon, resolved in his vision.

 _Just a dream._ He folded his arms over his face, stretching his legs and his back out beneath his blanket. _But what a vivid dream it was._

He turned over to go back to sleep, but couldn't quite erase the memory of that persistent, omnipresent beating from his mind. When Georgi closed his eyes, it seemed as though he could still feel it, like a drumming just below the surface, synching to the beating of his heart. . . .

Or was it the other way around? Was it pulling _his_ heart into synchronicity with _it_?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Popovich translates to "Son of the Priest".
> 
> All the music from canon universe exists in this universe. So _lyrics_ (with slight alterations) are borrowed from Chris's SP "Intoxicated" (again by Umebayashi Tarō), and after the "king's feast" Georgi plays Seung-gil's FS music, Maurice Ravel's "Pavane pour une infante défunte," or "Pavane for a dead princess". 
> 
> I wasn't able to find a version of the pavane played on balalaika or mandore (a predecessor of the mandolin), but [this version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48TPo_KHRjM) includes a couple of mandolins (at left) and should give some idea what Georgi's rendition might sound like and look like.


	5. The Promise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things cannot stand as they are.

“It's here,” Georgi said the next morning. “The Heart. I know it without a doubt now.”

Across the hearth, Michele regarded his renewed enthusiasm skeptically. “How do you know?”

“You may not believe this, but I had a dream.” It would have sounded a bit mad even to Georgi's ears, if he had not been left with such a sense of certainty upon waking. “Except I don't think it really was a dream, but some sort of . . . memory. A record, perhaps, of what happened to the Heart. In this dream-that-wasn't-a-dream, I was diving for it, reaching for it.”

“Which would imply that sometime in the past, _someone_ found the Heart here.” Michele bit his lip. “They could have taken it, as we feared.”

“Only, when I woke up,” Georgi was quick to add, “I had the strongest feeling that it never left this island. Not really. _It's still here._

“Somewhere.” That caveat alone cast a shadow over his bright mood. “I still don't know where, exactly. But it _is_ on Eros, and I'm confident we're getting closer. That dream was a premonition of our finding it.”

Michele sighed as he stood, and held out his hand for Georgi's empty bowl.

“I'll never understand you faeries and your mystical dreams,” he said, in such a way that Georgi knew Michele was only teasing him. “Don't you ever dream about mundane things like falling off a horse or being late to a lesson or eating a cloud? Or making love?”

“Eating a cloud is what you call mundane?” Georgi laughed.

Michele just rolled his eyes and unsuccessfully stifled his grin. “I'm going to wash these,” he said of the dishes. “You need my help today?”

“I should be fine alone. I want to see if anything in the caverns we've explored resonates with what I saw last night. I'll let you know if I have need of you.” For the first time in weeks, Georgi was actually excited for the day's work ahead.

* * *

Contrary to their fears, life beneath the waters of the cove did not dry up after the full moon. Now when Michele went swimming in the mouth of the cave, he found it teeming with fish and crustaceans and mollusks of every size and color of the rainbow—enough that he and Georgi could have lived comfortably on the bounty for another month, even if the spoils of the shipwreck had never washed up on their shore.

Sometimes Michele would pick something to take back to camp as a supplement to their supper. He was strangely fond of the horned sea snails that grew in abundance here.

Also, he enjoyed the swim. The illusion of weightlessness, the resistance of the water on his skin. The otherworldly beauty that surrounded him, below and above, all but untouched by man. When Michele dove, the fish did not scatter away from him. Some actually approached out of what he could only describe as curiosity. Even the occasional shark wished him no ill will.

And when his limbs tired, he could float on his back in the calm water, made crystalline by the mid-morning sun, and just stare at the play of light over the stalactites that hung like thousands of sparkling icicles overhead.

It was peaceful here. On stormy nights, the cave protected them from the wind and rain, dampening the roar of the waves against the reef to a soothing hum that lulled Michele into dreamless slumber. When he and Georgi first arrived, Michele feared the loneliness would drive him mad. Now, he found he had grown to appreciate the isolation. He could hear himself think. Even his thoughts had quieted. His fears, his plans, his shame—all faded to a whisper.

Of course, he knew eventually they would have to leave this place—with any luck, with their elusive faerie weapon in hand—and confront for a second time the squid that had already killed many of their allies. There was always a chance that when they did, they might not survive the confrontation.

But for the moment, he and Georgi had themselves a small plot of paradise. Michele was determined to make the most of it while he still could.

His morning swims served another practical purpose. Michele had lost too much weight for his liking during their first month here, some of it muscle. It struck him one day when he went to pick up Serenade for her weekly polishing, and she felt to him as if she had grown heavier. He needed to rebuild his strength for the fight ahead, while there was food to do it. And Michele tested himself by swimming farther out into the cove every day.

And by practicing his swordsmanship with oar shafts, sparring with invisible opponents conjured from his memory. Sometimes Emil, who could deal punishing blows upon a shield or armor with broadsword or pollaxe. Sometimes Seung-gil, or Sara. Both were fast, agile strikers, requiring Michele to be light and quick-witted on his toes.

Sometimes when Michele was practicing, Georgi would sit on a nearby rock with his journal and sketch out that day's maps from his memory. Sometimes he would bring the mandore and strum a lively tune that made Michele wish he were flying across the countryside with a trusty horse between his knees.

And sometimes Georgi would just sit and watch Michele duel his imaginary foes—until the silence grew too uncomfortable for Michele to stand.

“Would you care to join me?”

Georgi started out of his stare. “Are you asking me?”

“Is there anyone else I could possibly be talking to?”

A fair point. But Georgi laughed and said, “I'm not in the mood.”

“Mood is a thing for loveplay and dancing, or your balalaika,” Michele teased. “You don't often get to choose when and where you want to fight.”

And he tossed Georgi one of the oar shafts. The longer of the two. Michele wanted it to be as even a fight as possible, and as Georgi shied away from even touching swords, he could not have had much experience fighting with them. “Come on. Don't I at least deserve a chance to redeem myself after that bout aboard Giacometti's ship?”

“There'll be no witnesses if you win,” Georgi said, but he did get off his perch and circle around to take his place across from Michele.

“ _I'll_ know,” Michele told him. And anyway, it wasn't really redemption he cared about.

He loved the thrill that started behind his navel when he faced an armed opponent, each sizing the other up, like dance partners at the start of a canario. The clash of body against body, or weapon against weapon, skill against skill, quickened his blood and aroused his senses, in a pure and primal way. There was nothing more satisfying to Michele than trouncing a well-matched foe. Even being defeated by such a one, knowing he had done everything in his power to win, was a rush in its own right.

But this was one area—perhaps the only one, if he didn't count his ability to polish off a beefsteak—where Michele felt he had any sort of edge on Georgi. “Don't worry, I'll go easy on you,” he said as they took their starting positions. “At first. I don't expect you to have absorbed the finer points of dueling merely by watching. Just try to follow my example.”

So saying, Michele attacked with a few deft swishes of his oar shaft. If his father could see him now, he thought, he would be impressed with the precise, textbook lines of Michele's form.

Georgi parried, his reflexes quick, and Michele opened his mouth to applaud him on a job well done—

Only, before he could, Georgi batted Michele's shaft out of the way and twirled his own around in his fingers, countering with a sharp smack to Michele's hip with the handle end.

Michele winced and stumbled back at the sting, even if Georgi had done little more than tap him. “Well played,” Michele muttered, “but you would have sliced your hand open had you been dueling with a real sword.”

“Oh, I'm sorry,” but Georgi's lopsided grin was anything but apologetic, “you never said we were fighting with _swords._ All I see are a couple of wooden rods.”

Michele shook his head chidingly at Georgi, even if he could not hide his matching grin.

Still, swords were what he was used to, and Michele couldn't help it if he continued to jab and swing as if his own rod were a blade, just as Georgi twirled and whacked and hooked and blocked with his as if it were—well, exactly what it was: the shaft of an oar. It wasn't long before Michele, his arms and sides sore from repeated raps, had to admit that he had bitten off more than he could chew.

Admitting that to himself, however, and admitting it aloud, to Georgi, were two separate matters. Michele redoubled his efforts, beating Georgi back into the shallow water where the floor of the cave was smoothest. The splashing under their feet echoed like a desperate sound, and Michele would probably regret later that he had soaked his boots and the legs of his trousers for this trifle.

But for the moment his heart soared inside him and he laughed out loud at this pantomime of his and Georgi's. Each _tock, tock_ of a blow blocked reminding him of the showdown between Carabosse and the Prince in every performance of that old faerie tale Michele had loved as a child.

Then, in three moves, it was all over. Michele managed to hook Georgi's oar shaft and was set to twist it out of Georgi's grip, when his foot slipped out from under him. Michele lost his balance and went down, landing ass-first in the shallow water.

Which wasn't quite deep enough to break his fall. He winced at the jolt the hard rock floor sent up his spine.

When he opened his eyes, the handle of Georgi's oar was hovering beneath his chin like the head of a spear. “Does this mean I win?”

“Fine, fine,” Michele grumbled, brushing it away from him.

That teased a kind smile back to Georgi's lips. He tucked his weapon under his other arm, and extended his hand to help Michele to his feet.

But Michele wasn't ready to concede defeat just yet. He took Georgi's hand—then grabbed on to his arm as well, and pulled Georgi down into the shallows with him.

Georgi shouted in surprise and reached out to catch himself. The fae was quick, Michele knew, and if he wanted to hold on to his advantage he would have to be quicker. He pushed Georgi over and straddled his middle before Georgi could get himself back up.

“Double-crosser,” Georgi accused him, and tried to lift Michele off him, but his laughter left him weakened.

Michele made himself as dead a weight as possible when Georgi's hands hooked into the backs of his knees. “I thought we were making up the rules as we went along.”

Georgi must have realized it was futile. With a resigned sigh, he stopped trying to unseat Michele, though his hands didn't leave Michele's thighs. Just settled into a more comfortable hold.

Then again, perhaps this was the outcome Georgi had been hoping for all along. His normally sharp wit seemed to have abandoned him, and his gaze just flitted between Michele's eyes and his lips, heavy with expectation. Michele swallowed, finding his throat suddenly dry, the crazy thought filling his head that the only way he could soothe it again was to press his mouth to Georgi's.

So he did.

And once he had, Michele did not want to stop. For too long he had wondered what Georgi's lips would feel like, taste like, against his, but no fantasy could substitute for the gentle pressure of the real thing. The urgent pressure—which rose from within Michele just as Georgi was rising to meet him. Michele ran his hands up Georgi's neck, cupping his precious face, grasping at his hair, his back, his shoulders—anything to keep him close.

But Georgi wasn't going anywhere. His wet hands slid up the backs of Michele's thighs, kneading Michele's buttocks through his soaked trousers, as if to soothe the bruises away. And Michele could be forgiven if his natural response was to open his legs wider and press himself closer, not at all surprised to find Georgi in the same condition as himself. They were both so lonely, so aching for the touch of another soul, and Michele had long been drawn to Georgi. To his sharp beauty, and the sadness in his eyes that Michele would have given just about anything to cure him of.

And to his hands—God, those hands that could spark such wonderful magic, that were so warm and sure under Michele's shirt, up the length of his spine. With just a little push, he would gladly go wherever those hands bid him to.

Which was all the more reason for Michele to leap off Georgi's lap and back to his feet. Now, while he still had his wits about him.

“What's wrong?” Georgi said. “Did I hit a nerve?”

“No. No, it wasn't you.” And, at the same time, it was all Georgi.

Michele hissed out a breath as he stood rooted to the spot by indecision. Part of him wanted to ask Georgi to forgive him for the interruption, and crush their mouths together again. Part of him wanted to run to the back of the cave and hide himself away. Michele's face burned with shame at the way his wet trousers clung to his body. There was no way Georgi could misread how that kiss and his touch had left Michele feeling.

Yet Georgi had the gall to ask, “Do you need a moment?”

“God, Georgi, I just . . . I can't do that with you,” Michele told him. “No matter how much I might want to.” No matter how heavenly it had felt, like an answered prayer. Michele ran a shaky hand through his hair. “I made a vow.”

“A vow?” Damn him, but did Georgi have to look so ravishing, sitting in the shallow water with that perplexed furrow between his brows? “What kind of vow?”

“I swore to God that if I couldn't have Sara, I would have no-one,” Michele said. “She's the only woman in the world for me. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

“No, I don't. I'm not a woman, Misha. I'm not even your species. If you don't want me to touch you, I won't, but not for some stupid vow—”

“It isn't stupid!” Just to suggest it was felt akin to blasphemy. “You don't understand. How could you? You fae live so long you probably break a thousand promises in your lifetime without even meaning to.

“But the promise I made—those words I spoke aloud, before God, from the depths of my heart,” on aching knees, in sanctuary, late at night when everyone else was in bed except for him, because Michele could not sleep for all he burned for Sara, “they _mean_ something. They stand for something greater than myself, that will outlast myself. They're a covenant I cannot break.”

Oh, Georgi understood better than Michele gave him credit for. “So,” he said with a cruel smile, “you think your god would bring this cave down around you if lust after someone other than Sara? Heaven forbid we take a little pleasure in one another while we're stuck here! Do you really think he can see you through a million tons of stone?”

“You don't know what my God is capable of.”

“Well then, if he's capable of it, let him bring the whole island down,” Georgi laughed. “Either we'll be crushed to death or the location of the Heart will finally be revealed, but we'll be that much closer to finishing this mission and going our separate ways forever.”

 _Don't say such things,_ Michele wanted to say, his heart hammering madly. He wanted to clamp his hand over Georgi's mouth and profess to whatever deity would hear him that Georgi didn't mean a word of it.

But what could Michele say in his own defense? All along they had planned to part ways once the giant squid was defeated—Michele staying in Napul with Sara, Georgi on his way to Anya with the Heart. Perhaps never to see one another again.

That _was_ the plan. Only the thought had never terrified Michele so completely before.

“Forget it,” he said, something desperate rising within his throat that he was eager to quench with the last of the wine. “Just forget all of this. I'm going to dry off, and I'd like to be left alone for it.”

* * *

But Michele couldn't forget it. Barely two minutes after they had turned in for the night, Georgi was startled to find Michele sneaking into his pallet.

“What are you doing?”

“Can't I join you?” Michele's voice was a meek whisper in the dark.

_I don't know. Will your god allow you to without striking you down?_

But such a sarcastic response would have helped no-one, so Georgi's answer was to pull the blanket back and make a space for him.

Once Michele had settled on his side, stretched out facing Georgi, the silence cut like a sword laid between them. If Michele could feel his irritation, Georgi was not about to apologize for it. They had already had plenty of silence today in which to mull over what they both wanted, and Georgi was no longer as sure as he had been just that morning that what he was doing here was worth the trouble.

 _Let all of Napul drown in the ocean for Michele's stubbornness_ , he thought one moment, and hated himself for it the next. He had always been quick with curses he did not really mean.

“Do you intend to do something?” Georgi asked.

“I intend to sleep,” came the irritated response.

But that was a lie if Georgi ever heard one. This close, he could feel Michele's racing pulse, the way he vibrated with tension just below the surface. Michele may not have been able to smell it on himself, but he was as far from sleep as could be.

“I took a vow of chastity myself once,” Georgi told him. “When I left my motherland, my heart newly broken. I joined a brotherhood devoted to serving your god by feeding the intellect and denying the flesh. I suppose because I reasoned, if I'm never going to love again, I may as well never fuck again.”

Perhaps it was the language Michele found shocking. In the shadows, Georgi could just make out the bob of his throat as he swallowed hard.

“I lasted about a decade before I realized it was useless to deny my body what it wanted,” Georgi said to the unspoken question hanging between them. “Why burn when you don't need to? I wasn't the only one there who cheated on his vows, either. Looking back, it was naïve of me to ever think that loving and fucking had to be the same thing.”

“And that story is supposed to convince me of what, exactly?”

But the question seemed rhetorical, so Georgi did not answer.

“All that demonstrates,” Michele said, “is how little regard you have for the promises you make. But to me, a vow made before God is sacred—”

“Oh, is it?” Surely that explained why Michele's leg was moving against Georgi's beneath the blanket. Doubtless Michele would say if pressed that he was merely trying to get comfortable, but his movements were more deliberate than that, more self-aware.

“Are you sure this is alright? You're not concerned you might be impaled by a falling stalactite just for touching me? For thinking about me?  _Dreaming_ about me?”

Michele's heart skipped. His leg stopped. The air between them felt heavy as a winter quilt as Michele raised his gaze to Georgi's face, lingering on his mouth before returning, resignedly, back to the pallet between them.

“It isn't a matter of wanting or not wanting,” Michele whispered, as if Georgi should feel relieved that the problem was not with his desirability. “I want you to know that.”

“Just your stupid vow. You know, your god never cared when I broke mine. He never punished me—”

“You probably never believed in Him all that much to begin with, so why would He?”

 _Fair enough._ “Do you want to know what I think?” Not that Georgi cared if Michele wanted his opinion or not. “I think this self-denial of yours has nothing to do with vows. I think you're afraid—”

“Afraid?” Michele scoffed at the word, as if it were somehow worse than calling his vow stupid.

“Yes, _O brave knight_ ,” Georgi teased him, “afraid. That if you let anyone beneath your armor, they'll hurt you. You can't tell Sara what's in your heart because you know that if the truth ever came out, it would only end in pain for you both. So I don't blame you for hesitating to let down your defenses for me. But, Michele, if I can promise you anything, it's that I won't hurt you.”

“Georgi.”

Georgi took that as an admonishment to stop talking. He may have gone a step too far, dragging Sara's name back into his argument.

Then again, perhaps Georgi had misunderstood.

“You could kiss me,” Michele said. “You could hold me down and kiss me. I wouldn't stop you.”

“And you wouldn't fight back?” Oh, Georgi knew exactly where Michele was going with this. _Looking for theological loopholes out of your own vows, Misha?_ “You don't think God would see your capitulation for precisely what it is?”

Michele just stared unwaveringly back. “I'd be helpless. You could do anything.”

_Really. Let's test that theory, shall we?_

Georgi grabbed the hand that lay on the pallet between them and pushed Michele onto his back, pinning him there by his wrists. He hovered above Michele on hands and knees, far enough away that their bodies could not touch, but close enough that Michele could lean up and kiss Georgi. If only he wanted to.

“Anything?” Georgi asked him.

In answer, Michele bent his leg, his thigh sliding along the inside of Georgi's.

Georgi couldn't pretend it didn't tempt him. He could see himself giving in all too easily—could see himself tugging Michele's breeches down around his thighs and taking him into his mouth. Ignoring the tightening of Michele's fingers in his hair until he went limp and empty beneath Georgi. Judging by the way Michele's pulse fluttered in Georgi's grip, it would take but a moment to finish him off. Then maybe they would both get some sleep tonight.

But Georgi had more self-restraint than that, and more self-respect. And he doubted Michele was really as ready for _anything_ as he claimed.

“You really want me to force myself on you?” Georgi asked him, just to make Michele say the words. “Do you think that's what _I_ want to do?”

Perhaps it finally hit Michele then, the gravity of what he was suggesting. If Georgi took him at his word, there would be no coming back from it.

But, “You wouldn't really be forcing me.”

“Right. It would only be the _illusion_ of force.”  _To keep everything settled with your god._ “Don't you see that from my perspective, it's the same thing?”

No, of course he didn't. All Michele was conscious of was his own desire—Georgi could see it in the drunken look in his eyes by the light of the dying fire—and satisfying it however he could.

So long as he could wash his hands of any responsibility in the daylight.

“If you _really_ want me, Mishka,” Georgi purred, sliding his hands up into Michele's, threading their fingers together. Leaning close enough that Michele could feel the breath of his words warm on his cheek. “If you really want me, there's only one thing for you to do.”

“Yes?”

“Reach for me with your own two hands.”

And Georgi shoved himself up, rose from the pallet, and went to cool down by the water's edge, before he could change his mind.

Daring not to look back at Michele even one more time, for fear he just might.

* * *

When he was sure Georgi was no longer nearby, Michele covered his face with his hands, and muttered a string of curses underneath them. God, what a fool he was! craving the touch of a man who was not even a man, and a century older than him besides. If Georgi had decided to humor him, there was no telling what Michele might have said or done to further humiliate himself.

But Michele wasn't the only one to blame. Georgi didn't have to be so prideful. He knew exactly what ailed Michele, and how simple the cure, yet he refused to treat him.

Yes, the more Michele thought on it, the more Georgi was at fault for this wound to his pride. Could he not see how Michele longed, how he burned for him? Could he not see that Michele's hands were tied? And on top of everything, to patronize him with that nickname. . . .

 _I'm being played with_ , Michele told himself, _like a mouse between the paws of a cat._ He was nothing more than a short-lived curiosity to Georgi, if not merely a means to an end, and Michele was sick and tired of being treated like a perennial child.

He rolled over on the pallet and felt the rigid binding of Georgi's journal under his ribs. In his frustration, Michele could think of no better thing to fall into his hands at that moment.

He seized the journal up, thinking if he could not wound Georgi as Georgi had wounded him, at least he could hurt this one thing he treasured more than any other possession.

But as Michele raised the journal to bash it against the rocks, something fell out of one of the pages and into his lap.

The embers of the dying fire had left enough light to make out what it was. A small mallow flower, pressed flat. Its five heart-shaped petals had darkened, but he knew they must have once been a radiant hue of violet. The color of promises remembered.

_No: kept._

Instinctively, Michele looked over his shoulder. But he would not have been able to say whether he feared Georgi would catch him in the act of rifling through his most private thoughts, or hoped he would.

No sign of Georgi. Michele remained alone by the hearth. And only God Himself knew how gravely he had trespassed. If He truly could see Michele through a million tons of rock. Or even cared.

Before he could be discovered, Michele put the flower back.

It wasn't difficult to find the proper pages. They had been stained blue.

* * *

Michele tugged on the straps of the armor plating as hard as he could, but he just couldn't make them sit where they needed to.

“You've grown again,” he chastised Emil, as if Emil had any control over the matter. “We'll have to send these back to the armorer for a refitting, and it seems like only a month since he finished with the last one. I'm not sure who the real hostage is here: you, or Father's accountant.”

Emil laughed at that. And took Michele's hands in his, stilling them. “It'll do. For today.”

“But your spaulders don't fit properly. That gap leaves your right shoulder wide open.” Dangerously so, in Michele's opinion; even with a mail shirt underneath, one appropriately-placed thrust might be enough to end him.

But Emil was never one for playing things safe, no matter what Michele told him. “So I'll favor my left,” he said as though that solved everything.

Earning him a glare from Michele. “Cocksure, aren't you? Do you reveal your strategy to all your opponents before a fight?”

“Ah, but what if I only want you to _think_ that's my strategy?”

“Is everyone decent in here?”

Sara covered her eyes as she stepped into the tent. Though Michele noticed there was enough of a gap between her fingers to see them both through. And while Michele had had little to hide from Sara since they were children, the idea that she would find ogling a half-dressed Emil appealing did not sit well with him.

Nor could Michele deny that Emil was maturing quite handsomely. That, he decided, was what bothered him.

“We were just finishing,” Emil said, casting a sweet smile Sara's way. “Come to grace us with your favor, my lady?”

Michele made a disapproving sound, and Emil raised his hands in surrender, with another easy laugh. “I know, I know. I'll have to go through you first, Mickey, if I ever hope to win Lady Sara's favor.”

“Don't you forget it,” Michele grumbled.

Emil took up his helmet and excused himself to give the twins their privacy. Though not without first bending and pressing a lingering kiss to the back of Sara's hand.

Michele's jealousy must have shown on his face. Sara shook her head at him and went to finish securing Michele's armor.

“You know Emil means well,” she told him.

“He may _mean_ whatever he likes, but he presumes too much. I extend that boy the kindness I would my own relation, and he repays me by flirting _,_ shamelessly, with my own sister. Right in front of me, no less!”

“Of course he does. He knows the two of you are the most likely contenders for the final fight, and he wants to give himself an advantage. He knows how much it rattles you. It's a tactic,” Sara assured, placing the flat of her hands over Michele's breastplate. “And you're too quick to fall for it.”

 _Of course,_ Michele thought. _Yes, that must be it. Another tactic._ Emil had shown him nothing but warmth and loyalty these past few years he had been a hostage of the Crispinos, all but forsaking his own father in so doing. Even the Lord of Napul treated him as a second son. So Michele knew he shouldn't be so quick to rise to envy where Emil was concerned.

Yet he would not allow their amity to prevent him from trouncing Emil soundly in the tourney's final round.

As if reading the direction of his thoughts, Sara stood on her toes, pulling Michele down toward her so she could press a chaste kiss to his cheek.

“You know you'll always have my favor, dearest brother,” she told him sweetly, her breath like perfume on his skin. Her petite form, splendid in the violet of their house, fitting so delicately against the hard contours of his armor. “You're going to need it more than ever this time,” she teased him as she tucked her kerchief into his vambrace. “Emil's determined to claim the title of Champion for himself.”

“We'll see about that.”

All too soon Sara was pulling away from him again. She clasped her hands mischievously behind her back, but did not argue with Michele.

“I wish I could compete alongside you two,” she said, kicking at the turf floor of the tent. “Not in single combat, maybe, but in the shooting contest, or the roundabout. You know I can ride as well as any man in Napul. I suppose I should be content to take first place in embroidery and flower arranging, but I'm not sure I won on merit or if they only gave me first place because I'm the lady of the castello.”

“Good question. Your needlework does leave something to be desired.”

“Why, you . . .!”

Michele smiled fondly at his sister's pout. The slight pink of her cheeks and the flash of her eyes in her dark face. She was as wild and as wise as she was beautiful, and that was one thing about her he knew would never change, except to grow only more profound.

He should tell her. His heart leaped with love for her and whispered madly to him that if he told her now, maybe she would be ready to listen. Maybe all his prayers would bear fruit and he would find her heart as open as his, and the next kiss she gave him would not be a chaste blessing on his cheek, but a proper kiss, full of passion, against his mouth.

“What?” she asked him when she saw him staring at her.

No. No, he could not tell her. Not yet. Perhaps if he defeated Emil in the final round, but . . .

He would wait until the time was right. Until he had more proof, if ever he did, that she might return his love.

“Nothing,” Michele said, still smiling, as the crowd suddenly roared outside the tent. “I was just envisioning you being crowned champion, while men twice or thrice your size walk off with heads down and tails between their legs like scolded pups.”

“It's fun to dream anyway,” Sara said. “If nothing else, it sounds like Father's making a good show of it.”

“I keep telling him he's getting too old for the joust.” Michele was glad to be in the tent, where he could not see the action. Every time the lance connected, his heart seemed to stop in his chest in dread that this blow would be the blow that crippled their father. “Each year he insists on competing he's pressing his luck.”

“He knows what the people want to see,” Sara reassured him. “Besides, no-one would dare to unseat their lord-host.”

* * *

It was a mistake, the king's bannerman professed again and again. He had tried to _avoid_ landing a hard blow on his old friend. Everyone saw it and could attest that he had pulled back at the last moment.

He never meant for his lance to catch were it did. He certainly never could have predicted that the point would splinter just so and that a shard of it would pierce Lord Crispino's eye. It was an accident, an unfortunate, grave accident.

“No-one here believes you intended for this to happen,” Sara told le Roy's man, who was near inconsolable with his fear for his life as much as his grief. “You fought beside my father at the siege of Prahia and he always spoke highly of you. If he were awake now, I'm certain he would attest the same.”

The man bowed over and over, blubbering about Sara's wisdom beyond her years and his eternal gratitude for her mercy.

But Michele didn't care to hear the man's excuses. If it were up to him, he would have run the knight through on the jousting field when it happened. It mattered not a whit to him that the offender wore the king's red leaf, or was his father's professed friend. A friend could betray as well as any other. If Sara and Emil had not been there to stop him, urging him to keep a calm head and physically holding him back, Michele may yet have done it.

If there was one consolation, it was that his father still lived, and was aware enough of his surroundings to recognize his children through his remaining eye.

But it would not last.

“The splinter penetrated your lord-father's brain,” the physician took Michele aside to say. In hushed tones that were meant not to make it back to the patient. But Michele could see from the uneasy looks Sara cast his way that she, at least, could hear enough of the physician's words to worry.

“We've done what we can to stop the bleeding and ease his pain, but we cannot remove the splinter. Not without causing further damage. I fear . . . I fear if we tried, the bleeding would start again and we would not be able to stop it.”

“And if you leave it in?” Michele said, hope stirring faintly within him. “He'll live?”

But the physician's morose look stole that hope away again. “He may live a bit longer, but with an injury as traumatic as this . . .”

Kneeling at the bedside, Sara stifled a sob, and pressed her face into their father's hand. And Emil, not knowing what else to do, placed his own hand on her shoulder in comfort. Comfort Michele should have given her, but he felt impotent, and numb in his disbelief.

“How long does he have?”

The physician bit his lip. No doubt fearful whatever he said now might resurface to hurt him later. “Impossible to say. It could be an hour, or a day. I've heard of some men with similar injuries lasting a week, but—”

“Then there's time.”

The physician opened his mouth to refute that, but Michele's father spoke first, moaning desperately for Sara, as if he had just awoken from a terrible nightmare. Rather than into it.

“I'm here, Father.” Sara grasped that hand, already clasped in both of hers, even tighter, and raised herself to sit on the edge of the bed. “Mickey and I are both here.”

“Michele?” the lord whimpered, smiling in his drugged state as he turned his head to see his son.

But it was Emil his eye alit on. And he didn't seem to know the difference.

His own and only daughter, on the other hand, he knew with certainty. “Sara,” he said directly to her eyes, “it is time you heard my last will and testament—”

“No.” Michele was at his side in a second, taking his father's other hand in his and pulling that gaze back to him. “Don't talk this way, Father. You're going to recover.”

But the lord's council were already gathering closer like vultures in for the feast, and Michele could not keep his father's head from turning back in Sara's direction. “I had hoped not to burden you with this for years yet, my daughter—”

Michele could not bear to hear any more. Perhaps he could not stop his father from speaking of death as though it were standing right inside the door, but there may yet be a way he could keep it at bay. The physician had said his father may have as much as a week left, which was plenty of time for miracles.

Michele raced through the castello's halls and up the winding stairs, refusing to stop for anyone who got in his way. He knew where he had to go, and would not be deterred for any reason.

But when he reached Georgi's study in the tower, Georgi was not there.

“He went to aid with a difficult labor, next hamlet over,” Georgi's assistant told Michele. “And, my lord, my condolences. If there's any way I can be of use—”

 _He's not dead yet!_ Michele wanted to shout back. But he had no time to waste. He hurried to the stables and saddled his fastest horse, then rode her as hard as he dared, from his seaside castle and through Napul's busy streets to the next hamlet. There he knocked on doors one after another until he could stand it no more, and yelled for Georgi at the top of his lungs.

“No need to shout, I have patients recovering inside,” Georgi said as he stepped out from a cottage.

But he took one look at Michele's face and sobered. “What happened?”

Michele seized Georgi's arms. “I need you to come with me back to the castello. We've not a minute to waste. Father's been injured in the joust, and the physicians are a bunch of useless fools—”

“Slow down,” Georgi urged him, “and tell me _how_ he was injured.”

Somehow Michele managed to get the details out, though he could feel himself treading the edge of a panic, fearing at any moment he might slip and plummet off that ledge. They were wasting time talking here. If he could just fill Georgi in along the way, they would save precious moments.

But Georgi gripped him hard when Michele said the splinter was impaling his father's brain. His expression turned graver still. “Misha, I'm sorry, but with an injury like that, there's nothing that can be done except to ease the patient's pain and . . . wait for the end.”

That Michele refused to believe. “But you know magic. You can heal him with one of your spells—stop the bleeding at least. That ought to give him a fighting chance. Please!” Anything to stop Georgi from shaking his head. “He needs what only you can give him! He needs a miracle! Georgi—”

A peal of bells in the distance told the truth then: It was too late. The Lord of Napul was dead, and there was nothing Georgi could do for him. Nothing Michele could do. Again.

Michele sank to his knees as he fought to hold back what threatened to burst out of him, grasping Georgi to himself. If there was anything Michele could have given in that moment to go back to the start of this awful day, he would have given it. But he feared he had already done too much.

 _This is all my fault,_ the thought struck Michele for the first time. _It isn't enough that I should suffer for my wicked thoughts, my unnatural desires. Now God has seen it fit to punish my entire family for my sins._

As Michele descended further into despair, Georgi's arms enfolded him with their soothing warmth. Warmth Michele did not deserve, but he clung on to it just the same. Lest Georgi take it back again.

Eventually Georgi stood Michele back on his feet and said “Come. Let us get you back to your sister.” Holding him up with an arm under his arm, as though Michele were his patient now, and Sara's love the only medicine.

 


	6. The Cave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eros has its way with our heroes.

“ _Ow!_ This God-damned, death-trap of an island . . .”

Michele hissed as he tried to put his weight on both legs. Burning pain shot through his thigh and he had to steady himself against the rock.

“What happened?” Georgi said, returning to his side and bringing the light back with him.

He swore under his breath when Michele turned and showed him the damage. Somehow Michele had scraped a strip of skin off the outside of his right thigh, running toward the back, and in the center of it was a gash half as long as Georgi's hand, just starting to bleed in earnest.

“I lost my footing coming down,” Michele said through his teeth. “The damned rocks seem even slicker than usual.”

“It did rain hard a couple days ago. I suppose we both should have been more careful.”

“How bad is it? Because it feels like I tore my leg wide open.”

“There's a lot of blood.” But Georgi could see no foreign object on the rock that might have snagged Michele's skin. Just the rock itself. That was encouraging. He stuck two fingers through the rip in Michele's trousers, probing the wound—

Michele jumped and yowled before he could catch himself.

“Sorry,” Georgi said. “I just wanted to make sure. It's deep, but only flesh-deep. You're lucky. Considering.”

“I don't feel lucky,” Michele groused. “But, Hell,” a dark little laugh, as he looked down at the red drops gathering on the cave floor around his feet, “maybe a blood sacrifice is just what this island requires before it will give up the location of the Heart.”

Georgi, however, wasn't laughing in the least. “Don't joke about such things,” he said. “I thought you were against tempting fate.”

Then again, human belief had moved away from the old ways. But to the fae, there was power in blood—both spilled and unspilled.

“That's it. We're done for the day.” Georgi tugged his belt free and cinched it high around Michele's thigh. “Can you walk without putting your full weight on it? I know it's a bit of a trudge back to camp.” Just in case, Georgi looped Michele's arm around his shoulder. “You can lean on me where the passage is wide enough.”

Back at camp, Georgi set a pot of water to simmer. And after a bit of fruitless searching: “Where's the wine?”

“We drank it all, remember? A few days ago. During the downpour.”

 _Of course we did._ That now seemed rash, in hindsight. _Well, there's nothing else for it._ “Take your trousers off.”

“What?” Even in the shadow of the cave, Georgi could see Michele blush. “Is that really necessary? I'm, um, not wearing anything underneath them.”

At any other time, Georgi might have found his prudishness endearing, but just now he was too concerned for Michele's welfare to have much patience for it. “There's too much blood soaked into them for me to see what I'm doing. Either take them off or I will rip them up the back until I have a clear view of your wound. It's up to you how much stitching you want to do when I'm done.”

Michele saw sense then. Turning his back to Georgi, he removed his tourniquet and stepped gingerly out of his pants, then lay down on his stomach on the edge of his pallet. Careful to keep his front modestly covered by the balled-up trousers.

And, rather less successfully, trying to cover his backside with the tail of his shirt. The shirt just pulled up and bared him again the moment he moved his arms.

Georgi managed to keep his laughter at that to himself. At least Michele couldn't see the grin on his face; he was doing his best to keep his own pointed away from Georgi. It was bad enough to have torn his leg on the rocks, but to add this humiliation to his injuries?

Georgi didn't see what he had to be embarrassed about. Michele's long, trim limbs would have been the envy of many a fae, his sun-kissed complexion uniform from his daily swims in the nude. His buttocks and thighs jumped and shivered like those of a horse itching to run, either in tense anticipation of what Georgi would do to him or impatience for him to begin.

When Georgi did press the first rag, hot from the water, to his leg, Michele didn't cry out, and his muscles stilled and relaxed. His whole body stilled, as he concentrated on the feeling of that rag gently wiping the blood from his skin.

“This will hurt,” Georgi warned him, the nearer he got to the gash, “but I need to make sure there's nothing inside the wound.”

Michele winced at the first splash of cold water rinsing out the torn flesh. But by the time Georgi dabbed it with the hot rag, he had accustomed himself to the pain. “You don't suppose it's going to become infected, do you?” he asked while Georgi worked. “Nothing in this cave ever seems to fully dry out.”

“You'll be fine.” Georgi might have assured Michele that he had been aiding Napul's physicians and midwives since he arrived in that country, but the truth was that Georgi would have felt more comfortable back in his tower, in the city. Where he had ample light to see by, and the means to stitch Michele's leg back up properly and staunch the bleeding.

What he did have, however, he had always with him. And, remembering that, Georgi shifted on the rocks so that he could bend down, and pressed his lips to Michele's leg.

Michele stiffened at the alienness of that touch. It was not what he had been expecting.

He expected even less that he would feel Georgi's tongue a moment later, the flat of it laving gently over his wound. “What are you doing?”

“Saliva is a natural coagulant,” Georgi said quietly between licks. “Whereas cauterizing your wound . . . or stitching it up . . . with what crude tools I have here . . . might only make it worse.”

That didn't explain the kisses that followed, however, and kissing was the only thing Michele could call what Georgi was doing to his injured flesh. In a moment of panic, he thought of squirming away—but as if reading his mind, Georgi planted one hand on Michele's right ankle, holding him in place. The tip of his tongue pressed into the wound, tracing its length like a plow through the earth, and Michele shivered at the intimacy of it.

Then wondered if Georgi had done this before, and not on wounds.

On women? On _men_? He seemed so confident in his work, the sort of confidence born of practice. And Michele couldn't help but be excited by the thought, and more than a little jealous. It should have hurt—the tip of that tongue, opening him further—but after a few passes all Michele felt was a queer, half-numb pressure against his wound. And a delicious warmth, not unlike after a good swig of liquor, spreading through him from that point of contact.

Magic. It had to be. And Michele was intoxicated by it.

He moaned beneath Georgi's touch, pressing his face into the pallet and rolling his hips before he could quite catch what he was doing.

As if to tease him, Georgi hummed while he kissed Michele's leg, the vibration reaching down into Michele's bones and to the very root of him and making him see stars behind his eyelids.

“You don't have to act like you're enjoying it,” Michele said, despite the fact that he was. Very much so. More than he wanted to admit.

But each hum that resonated from deep in Georgi's throat made it sound even more to Michele's ears like he was being savored, like a steak. A kind of steak that Georgi might actually care for.

“Vibration,” Georgi sang against his skin, “helps the healing process . . . and reduces pain.”

 _That might be all it reduces,_ Michele thought.

“ _God_ ,” he hissed, hoping he might be forgiven if he didn't want Georgi to stop kneading his calf the way he was doing now. Or if he prayed that Georgi's kisses, having reached the highest extent of his wound, would keep working their way upward. Michele could feel Georgi's exhale, so briefly warm, against his buttock, and he burned for more.

“Alright. Turn over.”

And with a cheerful slap of Michele's calf, Georgi sat up.

 _You must be joking_. “Do I have to?”

“You'll make it unnecessarily difficult for me to dress your wound if you don't.”

And, by all but making love to his leg, Georgi hadn't made it unnecessarily difficult for Michele to simply turn and face him?

But Michele did as told. Slowly. Mindful of his leg. And of keeping the bundled pants firmly over his crotch. At least the bleeding had stopped, and the pain in his thigh had receded to a dull, faraway throbbing.

“Bend your knee,” Georgi told him, and without waiting for Michele to comply, reached for Michele's ankle and pulled it up to rest on the top of his shoulder. Doing his best to stifle his grin when Michele hurried to make sure everything was shielded from Georgi's sight.

“You know,” Georgi said as he prepared the dressing, “you don't have anything I've not seen a thousand times before.”

“You haven't seen _me_ before,” Michele grumbled, looking stubbornly away.

“Still, it can't look that different. Wait.” Georgi paused for dramatic effect. “It's not hideously deformed, is it? Or tiny?” And at Michele's look of horrified offense: “Oh. Abnormally large, then. That's certainly nothing to be ashamed of.”

“It's normal! Everything's perfectly normal!” Michele said, not appreciating how Georgi took such pleasure in his vulnerability. “It's just . . .”

“I excite you. I know.” And Michele had no doubt that Georgi could feel Michele's quickening pulse beneath his fingertips, or hear it in his voice, or somehow pick the scent of his longing out of the air.

“You know there are things I could do to relieve you of that ache.” So Georgi said as if he couldn't be less interested, as he pressed a poultice of seaweed over Michele's cut, and carefully bound it with a strip of linen. As if he were merely speaking as a physician, rather than the instigator of Michele's trouble.

“You need only ask.”

Michele hissed at the cold saltiness of the kelp.

Then tightened his grip on the bundled trousers, lest Georgi mistake his meaning. He didn't need Georgi telling him what he already knew. It was getting harder to keep his vow the more Georgi teased him.

Georgi tucked the end of the linen binding in, and it couldn't be just Michele's imagination that he let his fingertips slide across the inside of Michele's thigh and linger there just a little longer than necessary, before whispering: “All done.”

He reached for the bloodstained bundle tight in Michele's grip. “Want me to wash these for you?”

But Michele's vehement shake of the head made Georgi pull back his hand. “I'll take care of it. Later.”

“Suit yourself.”

Michele sat back up while Georgi gathered the rags into the hot water, gingerly stretching and tensing his leg. Strange how he could feel damaged and yet remade into something stronger at the same time, but surely that was testament to Georgi's skill and care. Michele swore he could still feel the warm press of Georgi's mouth on his skin beneath the kelp's coolness, and the bandage was like a constant embrace, sealing his kisses in.

Before Georgi could get up, something caved inside Michele just enough to ask, “Supposing . . . I _did_ want you to . . . you know. How would you . . .”

“How would I finish you? I suppose that depends,” Georgi said, so matter-of-factly it made Michele want to reach for him. Pull every word Georgi was withholding from his lips.

“Depends? Depends on what?”

“On you. On what you want me to do to you.” Georgi shrugged. As if it were really all the same to him. “These hands could play you like a song. Or, if you prefer I use my mouth, or my thighs—”

“Your thighs?”

Goodness, even for a human Michele was green. Too much of his life had he spent fantasizing about what and whom he couldn't have, and none of it enjoying the varieties of what he could.

So Georgi could be forgiven, couldn't he, if he couldn't help picking on Michele just a bit more, while he was still innocent? “Or I could just flip you over on this pallet and use you as I wish.”

Michele's heart leaped just imagining it. Not that the idea had never crossed his mind before. It was as if Georgi had reached down into his most wicked dreams, the ones Michele worked so hard to deny in the daylight, and plucked the most exciting gem from the bunch, held it out for Michele to denounce if he dared.

Michele swallowed hard, but refused to flinch. “You wouldn't. I'm injured.”

“You're right.” Georgi smiled sweetly, and somehow that was even crueler still. “I'd have to make love to you with the utmost tenderness—favoring your right side the entire time, of course.”

And before Michele could contrive a response, Georgi picked up the pot of hot water and rags and made for the shoreline.

The moment Michele was sure he wasn't coming back, he hobbled over to a clean pair of trousers, left hanging to dry from their last laundering on a makeshift scaffold. The renewed stinging of his wound each time he moved did its best to extinguish Michele's arousal.

For now. But he didn't know how much longer his resolve would last, being trapped in these close quarters with his tormentor and no-one to come between them. Really, Michele told himself, it would be better for both of them if he just gave in, and accepted his penance later. Surely God would see his and Georgi's situation as an unusual circumstance and forgive Michele's weakness just this once.

* * *

He was just looking for an excuse now. Georgi could sense it in every falsely nonchalant move Michele made. The way his fingers sought out Georgi's when he accepted a bowl of stew at supper. How Michele stared more than usual across the fire, and didn't look away as he so often had when their eyes met.

It was like something out of a melodrama. At times Georgi wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it (for what little good that would have done). And at others, to shout, _Just tell me what you want!—_ to hear those words echo off the cave's high ceiling until Michele could no longer ignore them or defer with hypotheticals.

 _Or maybe I'm the one being selfish._ Georgi had little appetite for stew tonight. Not with the taste of Michele's flesh, his blood on Georgi's tongue, so vivid in his memory. How could Michele be so close to him, so intertwined, and still feel so far away? They had been given all this time, with nowhere else to be and no-one to answer to, and Georgi could not but feel that they were wasting it.

So when Michele struggled to find a position on his pallet that wouldn't put pressure or strain on his injured leg, Georgi took his chance. He could stand by and watch this pantomime no longer.

He knelt behind Michele and stilled him with a hand on his hip.

“Do you want me to check your dressing?” Georgi asked when Michele turned his upper body to face him.

Michele nodded. He eased the pants down a few inches for Georgi to slide his hand beneath, finding confidence in the dark.

Georgi need not have seen it to feel that the poultice had not slipped or come loose during the evening. Nor did he feel the stickiness of drying blood on Michele's skin. Michele was hot against Georgi's palm, but the kelp kept his wound cool, and Georgi knew it was not infection that made Michele feel as though he were burning up with fever. “Is the bandage too tight? Does it bother you?”

Michele shook his head slowly. “Not now. Just keep doing that.”

The warmth, he meant. The magic. As if to cajole it out of him, Michele ran his fingers through Georgi's hair, nails gently grazing his scalp in time with the brush of Georgi's thumb across his thigh.

“You've ensorceled me,” Michele mumbled. “Haven't you? What other explanation is there? The harder I try to resist you, the less I can.”

“'Ensorceled'?” Georgi chuckled. “What horrid poetry did you discover that word in?”

“Yours, probably.”

Georgi supposed he deserved that. Though, if anything, he would have said it was the other way around. It was Michele's spell he had fallen under, long ago.

But rather than say so, Georgi turned his attention back to the leg, “There's some inflammation, but nothing that isn't to be expected at this stage of healing. Do you feel any tingling or tightness beneath the skin?”

“Not there,” Michele told him.

He found Georgi's hand, and guided it to the real source of his trouble. Sighing ragged with relief when Georgi took his suggestion, and finally took Michele's cock in his hot hand. Stroking him long and slow and thorough without any further prompting, committing the shape of him to memory.

And when Michele commanded him, begged him, “Kiss me,” Georgi was only too happy to comply. As he would have a day, a month, a year ago, if he had only been asked.

It was all Michele had only dared to dream of: the patient pressure of Georgi's lips kneading his, Georgi's deft fingers caressing and squeezing him as assuredly as though he already knew just what Michele liked and had for years. Michele rutted up into Georgi's hand—then hissed when his wound threatened to split open again.

“Let me.” Georgi guided Michele onto his left hip, where it would cause him the least pain. “I can still touch you like this,” he whispered at Michele's ear, teeth grazing the rim, while he slipped his fingers once again under the trousers. “Just try not to move this leg more than necessary.”

When Georgi pushed Michele's pants down his thighs, Michele stiffened in momentary panic, his breath catching in his throat. Did Georgi mean to do what he thought?

“Relax,” Georgi told him. “I'm not going to enter you.” There was a worthy goal to work towards, but Georgi didn't foresee Michele being ready for it before the next full moon. “Remember what I said earlier, about finishing you with my thighs?”

“How could I forget?” Michele had been able to think of little else all evening. He strained to listen to Georgi fumbling with his own trousers at his back, grateful that Georgi couldn't see the expression on his face or how hard he was breathing in the dark. If he could, Michele was sure his inexperience would have been painfully obvious.

Of course, it was obvious, at just a touch. Michele's flank leaped when Georgi laid his hand on him again, and his pulse thrummed under Georgi's palm like a small animal's.

“Relax, I said,” Georgi chided him. “Your heart's about to beat out of your chest.”

“I'm trying, damn it, but you know I've never—” Michele couldn't finish that thought before his cheeks and ears began to burn. “Just do it already, would you?”

Back to being the little lord, giving orders. In that case, Georgi didn't mind making him wait just a little longer.

He spit into his hand and coated himself. It wasn't ideal, no doubt they would both feel a bit raw come morning, but a little discomfort was something they had grown accustomed to, living on this barren rock of an island. Pressing an apologetic kiss to Michele's shoulder, Georgi stretched out behind him, pulling Michele back flush against his body.

Michele trembled at the urgent weight of Georgi's cock against the cleft of his ass, no linens or leathers to barricade them from each other anymore. He parted his legs enough for Georgi to slide between them, trying hard to be still like Georgi had asked him to. But Georgi's length rubbed against Michele's most sensitive of places, the head nuzzling the underside of his sac, and the jolt of electric pleasure that sent through Michele made it near impossible to stop his body from moving the way it instinctively wanted to.

“It's alright,” Georgi told him, reaching around Michele again. “The island hasn't caved in on us yet. You can bear down a little now.” And he stifled his groan in the crook of Michele's shoulder when Michele did just that.

Michele melted back into Georgi's embrace when Georgi's hand returned to his cock. He consigned himself to Georgi's experience, let him lead, and soon found himself swept along into an intoxicating rhythm. Sliding into the sheath of Georgi's fist between each roll of Georgi's hips against his that Michele pushed back to meet, tensing and relaxing his muscles to the ebb and flow of their breathing.

Michele may have been an innocent compared to Georgi's other lovers, but it was as if Georgi were coming off a vow of chastity himself, so gladly did he lose himself to the pressure of Michele's thighs. Georgi hooked his right leg over Michele's, forgetting for the moment every promise he'd made to himself to be gentle and mindful, and thrust as deep as he could go.

The friction of Georgi against him, building pleasure upon pleasure, while Georgi held him secure within the cage of his limbs—just when Michele thought his heart would bear no more, his release broke over him like a wave on the reef, his seed spilling over Georgi's hand. He turned his head, hungry for Georgi's kiss again.

And the sated moan Michele passed between their mouths, no shame left in it, just the total surrender that Georgi had sought from him for so long, was all the push, all the permission Georgi needed to let go and come, pulsating, between Michele's thighs.

But Georgi knew to prepare himself for the reversal of moods that was never far behind whenever Michele showed him his truest self. It would have cut too deeply to be pushed away so soon after what they had shared. So Georgi started to pull away first.

Michele grabbed Georgi's wrist and drew his arm across himself like a sash before Georgi could get very far.

“Sleep with me tonight.” Somehow it was as much a question as it was a request. As if there could still be a single doubt in Michele's mind that all this, all that Georgi had ever given him, wasn't merely an elaborate act, just waiting for the curtain of reality to fall and shatter its spell.

“And every night,” Georgi pressed the words into his skin, eager to banish that doubt. Then amended, “If that's what you want,” lest Michele think him too saccharine and suffocating in the afterglow, as Anya often had.

“I just don't want you to move.” By the slur in Michele's voice, he must have already been snagged in the first grasping tendrils of sleep.

But Georgi caught the little leap in Michele's heartbeat beneath his hand, and believed he recognized the hope in it. That when Michele woke, he would find Georgi right where he'd left him.

* * *

It was hard to get out of bed in the morning. And not because Michele's leg was hurting him.

The temptation to burrow under Georgi's arm and stay there all day was almost too much to fight. It would break his heart, Michele decided, if he had to get up now.

But Georgi threw off the covers, and half-carried Michele along complaining and shivering to the water's edge, where they stripped and swam out into the morning light.

By the time they were clean and dry again, and Michele's dressings changed, both were feeling their hunger.

“I wonder if you'll humor me with something,” Georgi said over breakfast. “Progress with the Heart is going slower than I had hoped, so I thought perhaps you could bring along your sword today.”

“Serenade? You're sure? I thought you couldn't stand to be near her.”

“It's true, I don't like the evil attached to it,” Georgi conceded, “but Carabosse's heart was also saturated with the evil of his thoughts and deeds in the end. I thought we might use the sword as a sort of divining rod, see if its darkness will resonate in the presence of similar darkness.”

“You mean sympathetic magic.” Michele could see the logic in it. And, since their normal method of searching had thus far yielded no results: “Why not. It's worth a try. Which of us will carry Serenade?”

Georgi turned his eyes away. Embarrassed, perhaps, that there were still some prohibitions he was not willing to put aside for their mission. “I will if I must, but I was hoping you would. If you think your leg is up to it.”

Michele wasn't too worried about his leg, however. “You think I'll be able to tell if we're near the Heart?”

“Don't worry. If my theory is correct, then when we get close, your sword should make that clear to you. No magical ability necessary.”

* * *

The theory may have been sound, but so far Michele had received no indication from Serenade that anything evil was nearby.

He wasn't sure what he should be waiting for. A sudden vibration or searing heat, a ringing sound or ghostly glow? Georgi only said he would know it when it happened, and that the effect would be unmistakable. Michele only hoped it would be unmistakable enough that he had not already missed it.

So far the only glow was the shimmer Georgi's light occasionally played across the blade, the only ringing that of their own voices off the molded walls and formations of the cavern. Georgi was composing a new song—something sticky and, true to form, cloyingly sentimental—and he worked it out in a hum as they walked, using his own echoes to play with harmony. Not always with a result that satisfied him, but the effect it produced was eerie enough that it gave Michele goosebumps.

Now and then Georgi would trail off to ask, “Any change yet?”

“Nothing,” Michele huffed back.

“That's too bad. I had hoped we'd have some luck in this stretch. The formations here are just the sort I'd use as markers, if I were looking for a hiding place.”

“Would natural markers not be too obvious? If the hiding place you're looking for is one you don't want anyone to find . . .”

“Perhaps you're right.”

Michele let Georgi get a little ahead of him, trusting he would not go too far. They'd been through this chamber several times before, and each time Georgi felt compelled to run his hands over the drapery, frozen in calcium carbonate, and the old carbon scores at eye-level, as if searching for some hidden hieroglyphs visible only to his fingertips.

Watching him like this, Michele could imagine a younger Georgi—well, younger but not necessarily younger-looking—casting his conjured light over the spines of ancient tomes and scrolls in that royal library he was so fond of mentioning. Georgi had taken to exploring the caves in naught but a waistcoat above the belt for some weeks now, due to the mugginess of the narrow passageways, but Michele hadn't allowed himself to appreciate where his own gaze lingered before.

No, that wasn't exactly true: Michele had always found endless cause to be fascinated with Georgi. Only when it came to his own intentions, his own desires, had he been dishonest and ashamed.

But no more. Georgi's bare shoulders and the hollow of his throat glistened with perspiration in the cool cast of the faerie light, like the flowstone around them glistened, and all Michele could think about was last night, and the velvety slip of Georgi's skin against his. It felt as though the walls of the cavern were contracting around Michele, making his heart work faster, his breath come shallower, and he knew his ability to concentrate on his given task would suffer unless he did something about it.

Michele sheathed the sword, unbuckled his sword belt and set Serenade against the wall. Then snuck up on Georgi, throwing an arm over his shoulder from behind and kissing his neck. Georgi even tasted like minerals—like the salt of their seawater bath that morning.

“Let's take a break,” Michele said softly by his ear. “My arms are tired.”

It wasn't a lie. Carrying Serenade for so long was taxing when Michele had grown unaccustomed to her weight.

But Georgi said, “Your arms, huh? They're what's troubling you?” and Michele could hear the crookedness of his smile.

Michele couldn't argue. He was half-hard against Georgi's backside already and only getting harder. “Please.” Another kiss. “I want to go another round.”

“Here?”

“Of course here. It's dark, the walls are close, and it's too sweltering for clothes.”

“Not to mention all the dripping stone phalluses around us.”

Michele was too polite to mention them, but Georgi did have a point about the stalagmites. More than that, Michele felt safer being bold here, in the dark heart of the island, than in their seaside camp. Making love there felt like making love in front of an open door. He wanted to hide under the blanket while they were doing it.

When he said that, Georgi laughed. “A door no-one is going to come through—”

“You can't promise that.”

Georgi sighed in mock-exasperation, even as he turned in Michele's arms, took Michele's face in his hands and kissed his mouth. “I should never have urged you to break your silly vows,” he murmured, though Michele knew he didn't regret it one bit. “We'll never get any work done at this rate.”

In answer, Michele pulled Georgi flush against him, the better to feel his trouble. “Then we agree you're responsible for this—”

“Credit I'll gladly take.”

“So? What do you intend to do about it?”

Georgi looked about the chamber they were in. Spying something back the way they had come, he cast his faerie light in that direction. Then hooked Michele's arm and, with a terse “Come,” pulled him along after it.

At the bottom of a steep slope was a thick stalagmite that almost touched the ceiling, and its base was wide and smooth with just gentle enough of a grade to climb on. Michele thought he caught Georgi's meaning when Georgi leaned him back against it, taking Georgi's waistcoat in both hands and attempting to pull him down for another kiss.

But Georgi held back. “Move up,” he said.

And when Michele hesitated, Georgi moved him himself, hooking Michele by the back of the knees and hoisting him higher onto the rock.

Michele winced at the abuse to his wounded leg, which was just starting to bruise in earnest. But then Georgi's hands were up under his shirt, demanding Michele's full attention, his breath hot against Michele's bare stomach as his lips slipped on beads of sweat. Michele hurried to pull the shirt over his head, not an easy task as his arms were shaking, his whole body quivering with anticipation. He feared he might hyperventilate.

Or else come too soon, as Georgi's kisses moved lower and he started tugging at the laces of Michele's trousers. And Michele very much wanted this to last—if only a few minutes longer. He was so hard now he ached, and everything that brushed against his cock brought him that much closer to the edge.

When Georgi freed him, the shame that had shadowed Michele for so long now seemed little more than a whisper in the back of his mind. He wanted to see everything—not just to feel what Georgi was doing to him in the dark, but watch Georgi touch him by the cool glow of the faerie light, the same way Michele had watched him touch the rocks. With curiosity. With reverence.

“Please,” Michele gasped, needing more, more Georgi—Georgi up against him, between his legs, Georgi's mouth on him. On his cock, spreading wet kisses up the length, his tongue peeking out to catch a drip of precome.

Georgi slipped the glans into his mouth and Michele couldn't help but moan at the gentle suction. He almost laughed at the way it echoed off the cavern's walls, a distorted, debauched lowing. So unlike the music of Georgi releasing his flesh, as patient and unaffected as the omnipresent drip of water down the walls.

“Don't be shy,” Georgi whispered against Michele's skin. “I like to know how I'm doing.”

“As if you can't tell,” Michele said as Georgi took him in his mouth again. His sarcasm earned him a chuckle, the vibrations thrumming deep through his flesh, leaving Michele tense like a bow nocked, aimed and ready to fire.

He combed his fingers through Georgi's hair, torn between warning Georgi he felt the edge approaching and never letting him stop. But he wanted above all else to come with Georgi's mouth pressed to his. Michele would not have been able to say why if asked. Just that he needed it like he needed air underwater.

There was no need for Michele to say the words. Georgi released him and crawled up on the rock, and the musky taste of his own sex on Georgi's tongue only made Michele hungrier for him. He grasped Georgi greedily to himself, wrapping his legs around Georgi's thighs, even as Georgi wrapped his hand back around Michele's cock and pumped him the rest of the way to completion.

When Michele came, Georgi held his cock head fast until Michele had emptied himself completely into his fist. Struck by the possessiveness of the gesture, Michele tore himself from Georgi's kiss just so he could watch.

But it was Michele's face Georgi was watching. When Michele raised his eyes again, he was startled by what he found staring back at him.

For the split second before Georgi hid it from him again. It wasn't the first time Michele had caught Georgi looking at him that way either, but it may have been the first time Michele allowed himself to recognize it for what it was, and that only because, in that instant, he had felt it, too. Radiating warm from his core outward.

“Better now?”

“Hm? Oh,” Michele shook himself out of his stare. “Much. Thank you.” But Georgi was still hard against his thigh. “What are we going to do about you?”

To Michele's disappointment, Georgi pushed himself back to his feet. “Nothing.”

“For God's sake, don't play the martyr now. It's no fun if I get all the satisfaction.”

Georgi might have told Michele that he still had a lot to learn, that satisfying another was its own reward. “I've had plenty of practice with delayed gratification,” he said instead. “I'm sure I can last a few more hours.”

As if just remembering it was still there, Georgi wiped the ejaculate from his hand on the base of the stalagmite.

And it occurred to Michele, while he pulled on his shirt and laced his trousers back up, that centuries from now his seed might be there still. Preserved under a thin mineral varnish. Just like the carbon smudges and the boot print. Petrified proof of their lovemaking, surviving long after the two of them were dead.

“Come on,” Georgi said, “get your sword and let's see if we can check this section off our list by the end of the day.”

All Michele wanted right that moment was a nap, but he trudged after Georgi anyway, looking only more forward to evening.

* * *

Hours later, it was Georgi's pallet Michele planned on drifting off to sleep in. If he ever had his fill of running his fingers through Georgi's hair, or tracing the lines of his face, his neck, his chest. . . .

If Georgi didn't know better, he might have allowed himself to believe the tenderness in Michele's touch was love. But he wasn't sure Michele knew how to let a second person into his heart, when he was so convinced it beat for Sara and Sara alone. This was only more of what Georgi had always received from Michele: admiration, brotherly affection, fascination. If love at all, then merely the love one feels toward a faithful friend.

And perhaps a fair amount of desperation. What if it was only loneliness that had convinced Michele it would be safe to cave, to indulge his curiosity? Distract himself from their situation by taking refuge in another's arms?

Georgi wanted to believe there was more to it than that. But it might only make things more difficult for them when their mission was finished if there was.

As if reading his mind, Michele said, “What if you didn't go back to Anya when this is over?”

The question startled Georgi enough that he had to flinch back. Just far enough that he could search Michele's face properly.

Georgi thought he knew the answer already, but he asked, “And do what instead?”

“Stay with me, of course.”

“In Napul—with you and Sara?” Georgi didn't mean to sound so dismissive, but he had been around long enough to guess how this might go. How, back under his sister's roof, by her side once more, Michele might no longer want Georgi following him back to his bed after supper, sucking him off before sending him off to dreamless sleep.

Or worse: Michele might want exactly that, only as a substitute for what he could not have.

“And Emil,” Michele added, narrowing his eyes at Georgi. Georgi should have known his sudden bitterness wouldn't go unnoticed. “That's not to say you shouldn't take Anya the Heart after we've used it, as planned. Only, if things don't work out between the two of you like you had hoped . . . You'll always have a place with me, Georgi. I hope you know that.”

His dark cheeks seemed to darken just a bit more when Michele made his offer, and Georgi couldn't help himself. He wrapped both arms around Michele's middle and gave him a squeeze.

Michele made a startled little sound when Georgi kissed him, and though Georgi had thought him spent, Michele stirred with renewed interest against his hip. _Oh, to be twenty-two again,_ Georgi thought, recalling stretches when he and Anya had made love for days at a time, stopping only to nap and eat and bathe. But that was a long time off and Georgi would not wish to have the naivete of his youth back along with the stamina.

“I'm not asking you to come back and be our in-house wizard,” Michele said. “After this, I trust you know I consider you like family.”

Then it was Georgi's turn to sober. He knew Michele didn't mean that he thought of Georgi like a brother. For a moment, he could picture the two of them as uncle and faerie godfather to Sara's children, playing at magic tricks and sword fights. Playing at something like a marriage.

But that was just a dream. Just a bit of fantasy conjured up by the isolation of this island. And the spell it wove about them, making them believe, if only for a little while, that there was no world outside it, dictating different paths for their futures to take. And no dangers waiting for them out there beyond the reef.

“It's a generous offer,” Georgi told Michele. “Of course I'll keep it in mind.”

“But?”

“Well, what about your duty to your country? Your legacy? Don't you think you'd be happier, in the long run, if you found someone of your own kind to settle down with, someone with whom you could start a family?”

Michele was groaning and pushing himself away before Georgi could finish.

Georgi wasn't being deliberately dense. But Michele, frustrated that his mind wasn't an open book to Georgi for once, sighed in irritation and sat up. Shivering a bit and clutching the blanket around his waist when the cool night air hit his naked skin.

“Is it because I'll age and you won't?” he said after a moment, toward the opening of the cave, “Is that why you're afraid to stay with me? I assume you will still look much the same as you do now when I'm old and frail.”

And there it was. Georgi always tried to forget it, but the sad truth just kept coming back to haunt him: He would outlive any human he gave his heart to by centuries. “I've never stayed with anyone long enough to notice.”

But Michele recognized a dodge when he heard one. “Because you didn't want to watch them wither and die before your eyes?”

“No.” Though perhaps that fear had been there, unexamined, in the back of Georgi's mind. “Because I didn't care enough for any of them to stay that long. My interest in them always withered long before their bodies could—or else, their interest in me did. After a few years, we would find reasons to go our separate ways.”

It was a lonely life, when Georgi looked back on the last century with clear eyes. He wasn't sure if he had been unable to love since his exile for the simple truth that no-one could compare to Anya; or if he had withheld his heart so as not to be subjected to the agony of losing love like hers again. It nearly killed him once already. Compared to that pain, the ennui of solitude was easy.

But he would give it away again, his solitude, in an instant. Though it meant reopening his heart to heartache, Georgi would do it if that was what Michele asked of him. If that was what Michele truly wanted.

What were another eighty years away from Anya's light, really, if at least Georgi could say he had spent them at the side of someone he loved?

“Do I really need my last thoughts before I drift off to sleep,” he joked, reaching for Michele's thigh and sliding his fingers up the inside of it, “to be of comforting you on your deathbed as a shriveled old man of one hundred and two? Who can no longer get it up?”

That was one thing Michele had no trouble with now. He bit his lip around a moan and let Georgi play him like the mandore, jumping a little when Georgi found a ticklish spot.

“Keep doing that,” Michele swore, twisting around to straddle Georgi's waist, “and I promise you, that will never be a problem.”

Michele captured Georgi's lips when Georgi rose to meet him, boldly slipping his tongue between Georgi's teeth, and Georgi foresaw a late start to tomorrow's exploring, as sleep was the farthest thing from his mind now.

 


End file.
